


Sunlight Underground

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Beauty and the Beast Elements, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, I made the Nein into a pantheon yall, M/M, Mutual Pining, Persephone AU, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 33,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25172020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: Mollymauk Tealeaf is a god of revelry, and he's always wandered wherever he wants to. One day, he wanders into a cave and eats something he shouldn't have.It's a retelling of Persephone and Hades!
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 74
Kudos: 302





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A rundown of the pantheon as I've made it:
> 
> Mollymauk - God of revelry and fertility and joy. Real party person  
> Caleb – God of the dead, associated with sorrow, fire, and destructive forces like floods and stuff  
> Yasha – Goddess of war and heartache  
> Beau – Goddess of knowledge and truth  
> Veth – Goddess of in-betweens, compromise, and generally uncomfortable places to be  
> Fjord – God of judgement, associated with leadership (specifically knowing when to step up or step back)  
> Jester – Goddess of joy and innocent (read: not intentionally malicious) mischief  
> Caduceus – Nature god, has to do with death and rebirth
> 
> yes there are overlaps, pantheons are fun that way
> 
> (Inspired by a piece of art by Millimauk, you know the one)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Should I be working on The Revenants? yeah  
> Am I still working on The Revenants? yeah  
> Am I starting this one too anyway? yeah

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want to come with us?” Mollymauk asked Beau for the fifth time. He was standing over her while she sat, cross-legged, on a straw mat in the middle of a room in her small house.

She opened one eye. “I already said I don’t want to spend an entire afternoon picking blueberries. I have other things to do.”

“Ugh. You’re going to find another library and sit inside for the whole day?”

“There’s always trouble brewing somewhere in the human world,” Beau muttered. She was quiet for a moment. Then, reluctantly, she unfolded her legs and got to her feet. “One of my temples is investigating something major and they called on me for it. I'm holding a blessing for them. I might even have to go to them and help.” She tipped forward and landed on her hands, kicking her feet up in the air. She stayed there, balancing. Mollymauk considered reaching out to tickle her. She must have seen the thought cross his face, because she scowled. “Don’t you dare.”

Molly grinned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway, last chance. Jester specifically asked me to come ask you. Are you _sure?_ ”

Beau tipped up onto her feet again and paused, as Molly had known she would. Jester was a way bigger temptation than the berries. But after a minute, Beau’s expression hardened. “No,” she said. “I have to be paying attention, and I can’t do that if I’m running around with you two.”

“All right.” He sighed with theatrical disappointment and turned to go.

“Hey,” Beau said to his back.

He turned around.

“Tell Jester I said thanks for inviting me,” Beau said. “And…” She shifted her weight. “Ask me again next time, okay? Like… try to let me know in advance. I can try to get Fjord to cover for me in case something comes up.”

Molly grinned. “Fair. See you later.”

“Yeah.” Beau waved him off and went to meditate on her mat again.

Jester was waiting outside, bouncing on the balls of her feet. She brightened when Molly emerged from the doorway, and dimmed a little when she saw that he was alone. “She’s not coming?”

"Not this time,” he told her cheerfully. “But she said to ask her again the next time we go.”

“Oh. All right.” Jester made a visible effort be happy again. “We’ll just bring some back for her! And they’ll taste _so_ good, she’ll have to come with us!”

Molly slung an arm around her shoulders. “Even better, we can show her how good the blueberries are, and then we can tell her that we won’t bring her any next time. We can say she has to come get her own.”

“Yeah!” Jester hesitated. “But, we won’t _actually_ not bring her any, will we? Like, I don’t want to go and then not bring her anything.”

That made Molly laugh. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll see. But we should get going before it gets too hot.”

The sun was getting higher by the time they reached the hills. Jester called a rest and plopped down in the grass in a pile of her skirts. Mollymauk squinted and used his hands to measure the distance from the horizon to the sun—a trick Fjord had taught him. “About four hours after sunrise,” he muttered. “So, I’d say it’s two or three hours before noon?”

“We have plenty of time, then!” Jester got to her feet again, tail swishing. “Let’s go! They’re just on the other side!” She flounced off up the hill and stopped at the top of it. “They’re right here!” she shouted, and then disappeared.

Molly laughed and trotted after her. When he arrived at the top, he paused just to take it all in.

The entire hillside was absolutely blanketed with wild plants. Flowers of all different shapes and sizes, in all violent shades of pink and purple and blue and red and yellow. A few twisted trees, perfect places to take a nap in the shade. And, of course, the berry bushes.

“I found a huge patch!” Jester was waving at him from a ways off. She had her skirt held out in front of her in one hand, and Molly could see that she’d already gotten started. There were a good two dozen blueberries in her makeshift basket.

“You’ll stain your dress.” He held open one of the linen bags they’d brought with them so she could dump the berries into it.

“It's fine!"

As the sun climbed, they moved from patch to patch, eating some of the blueberries and stashing some more in their bags. A couple hours after noon, in the hottest part of the day, they took shelter from the sun under a tree with heavy branches and thick leaves. Molly stretched out on the grass with his hands behind his head. Jester sat with her back against the tree, drawing in her sketchbook with her tongue poking out the side of her mouth. Every once in a while the wind came up off the valley and rushed through the leaves, a sound like the push-pull of ocean waves.

“Jester,” Molly said after a little while. “Tell me a story?”

She sat up a little straighter. “Which one?”

“How about Marion’s?”

He didn’t need to see Jester to know that she’d brightened. She loved the stories her mother used to tell to her and Mollymauk. Sometimes, when Molly got a look at her sketchbook, he noticed familiar scenes sketched out on the pages. That was how he knew that the stories had stuck with her, just like they’d stuck with him. Stories of the gods from before they ascended. Back when they were still mortal.

“Once upon a time,” Jester said, bringing her knees up and starting to draw in her sketchbook, “There was a _beautiful_ woman named Marion. And she sang _all over the world,_ for kings and queens and in temples and cathedrals and theaters! Everywhere! And her songs were so beautiful that they made people cry and fall in love and fall _out_ of love so they could fall in love with _her—_ ”

“That’s not how Marion told it,” Molly cut in.

“It’s what happened, though, so shush.” Jester tapped his horns with her pencil, and Molly laughed. Jester drew herself up and continued, “ _Anyway._ Lots and lots of people were in love with her, and people were proposing to her left and right and up and down and her house was always full of flowers from people who had fallen _so deep in love with her_ because of her voice and because she was _so_ beautiful and _so_ nice and pretty and talented. And she was such a treasure to everyone who met her that people called her The Ruby of the Sea.”

“And _then,_ ” she said, “one day, a _god_ fell in love with her. And he offered her everything he could think of, gold and riches and jewelry and a house and servants and _everything._ And finally he offered to make her a god. Except he couldn’t _actually_ make her a god, because it doesn’t work like that. Either a god ascends by themselves, or they’re born a god, or the other gods decide to make them a god.

“So what the Ruby of the Sea did was she came to the valley of the gods and she sang! She sang a song that was so gorgeous and pretty and amazing that the gods begged her to stay and sing for them again. And she said yes! And now she has me, and we live in the valley of the gods together! The end!” She flipped her sketchbook around to show Mollymauk what she’d been drawing: A portrait of herself and Marion, back when Jester was a little girl sitting in her mother’s lap. They were pretty good likenesses, even if the features were a little exaggerated.

“Happily ever after,” Molly put in.

“Happily ever after!” Jester agreed. She made a few tweaks to her drawing, and then finally looked up at the sky. “Oh, man, it’s getting late. We should probably head back home if we want to get back before dark.”

Mollymauk yawned and pushed himself upright. As Jester got to her feet and started packing up, he stayed seated, considering the distant hills that led back the way they’d come.

“…Molly?” Jester asked. She was standing nearby with her bag slung over her shoulder.

He exhaled. “You go on ahead,” he told her. “I’m going to stay out for a while longer.”

“Oh.” Jester seemed surprised, but not worried. Mollymauk was prone to wandering, everyone knew. He got antsy in one place for too long. Besides, his role as a god made him pretty fun at parties, so he was welcome wherever he went. “Are you going to the mortal realm?”

Mollymauk thought about it. He knew better than almost anyone that the realms of the gods and the humans weren’t as distinct as many thought they were. If he wandered far enough from the valley of the gods, he was bound to run across the mortal realm. Usually, he would bounce around there for months on end—riding from town to town on the backs of farmers’ carts, travelling with dancing troupes or circuses, following rumors of festivals and weddings and blessing the couples and revelry. It was so good that his whole role in the world was to bring joy to people. Color and music and new love and new life.

"Maybe,” he said. “Probably not quite yet.”

“Do you want me to tell Yasha where you are?”

Molly hesitated. How strange it was that his best friend in the world was the goddess of war and grief. Maybe they’d been drawn to each other—her seeking warmth, and him looking to provide it. Or maybe it had more to do with how she didn’t always expect him to be bright and cheerful. Maybe he should have been ashamed to want a break from duties as great as his, but, well… sometime he got tired. And Yasha had always been comfortable with quiet. Yasha had taught him to be comfortable with quiet.

He’d just about had his fill of quiet in the last few weeks, though. “Sure,” he said, climbing to his feet. “You go on back and tell them I’m out wandering. You’ve got Beau’s share?”

“Yeah.” She showed him the bag.

“All right.” He slung an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tightly. She hugged him back. Then they said their goodbyes and Jester trotted off. She kept turning back to wave at him until she disappeared over the hill.

And then Mollymauk was alone, on a windswept hillside in the late afternoon sunlight. He turned away from Jester and put his hands on his hips. Past the berry patch, the hills rose and rose until they boiled up into mountains that weren’t quite tall enough to loom, though they were certainly a presence. Mollymauk hadn’t gone wandering near them in a long time. Perhaps it was time to fix that.

He opened his bag and picked out a handful of blueberries. Then he set out towards the foothills, popping the berries into his mouth one at a time as he walked. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no caleb quite yet but I promise he's coming


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little late for the anniversary, but doo-doo-doo, here it is

For a little while, Mollymauk wandered the foothills. There were spirits all around the area—trees and water and flowers and stone—and he joined a few of their parties if he was lucky enough to come across one at the right time. The nature spirits really had the best drinks.

Almost a week after he parted ways with Jester, he found something like a deer path and followed it up to a cliff edge, where he stopped to rest with his feet dangling off the edge.

From up here he could see the whole valley of the gods stretched out below, as warm and familiar as a handmade blanket. He thought for a moment of his bed back home, somewhere in the little scattering of buildings at the far end of the valley. But he had a warm bed anytime he wanted one and in a way, everywhere was home.

But maybe it was time to move on, wander a little farther away. He’d half expected Yasha to come join him. To tell the truth, he’d sort of hoped she would. But maybe it was better that she didn’t. He knew that it hurt her to join him on these trips. He’d seen the way she smiled at the couples he blessed. Soft and sad, remembering something she’d never get back. At times like those, he couldn’t always stop his thoughts from souring. If only he was stronger. If only he wasn’t just a god of revelry. If only he was powerful enough to find Zuala and bring her back, then maybe Yasha wouldn’t be so sad.

Sometimes, he loved being a god of revelry. And sometimes he couldn’t think of a worse punishment. What had he been like in life, that this was what he’d ascended to? He was the only god he knew of who couldn’t remember at all. Maybe it was some kind of curse for something he’d done. Maybe it was meant to be a kindness. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

He shook his head and got to his feet. The wind was strong here, whipping his hair in his face and flaring his multicolored coat out behind him. He sighed. Not a sad sigh, or a disappointed one, just… a deep breath, in and out, a clean reminder to himself that he was still alive, still breathing. There was nothing he could do about what sort of power came naturally to him.

He needed to move on. Physically, from this spot, so his mind would move on from these thoughts. It was time to get lost again. He put his back to the valley and headed off into the woods choosing a distinct direction this time. He would just walk until he found people or a road, and he’d change course from there and find a city.

Around noon, the sound of wingbeats drew his attention skyward. He looked up just in time to see a dark shape circling overhead, visible in the gaps between the trees. Molly grinned and called, “Just a second!”

He took off his belt and wrapped it around his wrist, making sure there wasn’t too much skin showing before he lifted his hand and called up, “All right. Come on.”

The creature—a small falcon—flew down to land on his wrist. The bird’s origins were a mystery to Mollymauk. He’d asked around about it, but nobody in the valley seemed to know where it had come from. He’d even tried asking around in a few human towns, but still he heard nothing about a falcon who only ever appeared when it had a delivery to make. This time, it had a small leather drawstring pouch in its beak.

“Thank you.” Mollymauk held up his free hand, and the bird dropped the pouch into it. He used his teeth to pull the pouch open. Inside, he found a string of beads with a curious design he hadn’t seen before—the beads, all in warm golds and reds and yellows, were strung between two thin cords of leather. A necklace, maybe? Or a bracelet, meant to be wrapped around the wrist several times? He might have seen something like this before…

The bird pushed off his arm and flew to a branch overhead. Mollymauk, his hand now free, wrapped the beads around his wrist and then held his hand out in front of him to admire it. Normally offerings from worshippers showed up on the ground or in his pockets, so the ones brought to him by the bird had a special place in his mind. The beads caught the sunlight, throwing glints of color across his wrist and the trees nearby. Molly turned his wrist, watching the reflected light slide across his skin.

The falcon squawked to remind him it was still there. He smiled and untied the bracelet. “Thank you,” he told the it, offing his leather-wrapped arm again. The bird fluttered back over and latched onto his wrist, flicking its feathers as it settled. Molly rubbed the bird’s chest with one curled finger, and it fluffed out his feathers and pulled its head down, its eyes shut in sheer bliss. Molly grinned. “Yes, you clever bird, good job. I’ll see that this gets to someone who will love it.”

He could still remember the first time the bird had brought him something—a woven sash, glittering with tiny rubies the size of mustard seeds. He’d dearly loved it, but right away he’d had a strange feeling that it wasn’t for him. He’d taken it with him to a wedding and left it as a gift for the new bride. That had felt right. With every gift the bird brought him, any happiness he felt doubled when he gave it to someone else.

The bird didn’t seem keen to stick around, but then, it never did. Other deliveries to make, probably. It roused itself and shifted its wings in a way that Molly knew meant it was getting ready to fly off—probably back to wherever it came from. Someday Molly wanted to follow it and see where it went. But not today.

He held his arm out straight, giving the bird enough room to spread its wings. With one final chirp at him, it pushed off and flapped upwards away from him, towards a break in the trees. And then it was gone.

Molly sighed. He was already lonely again.

Figuring the deer path had to lead somewhere, he followed it up and down and through a creek and past another berry patch—which he stopped in to fill his emptied bag—before the path led up a rocky slope and then ended in a cave.

It was a decent-sized cave. The ceiling was twice as high as Molly’s head, and wide enough for about six of him to walk through shoulder-to-shoulder. When he stepped into the opening, he felt a draft from inside. The air smelled dry and old, like bone.

“Huh,” said Mollymauk.

And then he went in.

There was no sound inside, except from the fading noise of the woods and Molly’s footsteps against the smooth stone floor. After a little while, the cave curved to the left. Then to the right. It kept going like that, a lazy switchback, leading down and down and down. At one point when Molly glanced back, he found he could no longer see the light from the entrance to the cave. For the first time in a very long time, the sky was not right there for him to step out and look at. That made him a little uneasy.

But then, when he looked ahead again, he saw light. Warm, flickering light, like from a torch. He kept moving towards it and found… well, a torch. Propped up in a metal sconce set into the wall. There was another one up ahead, burning… well, not burning _merrily,_ but definitely brighter than the cold stone walls. Was somebody _down_ here?

His curiosity once again winning him over, Mollymauk continued. He followed torch after torch, farther and farther from the surface. He didn’t know how long he’d been walking when the cave abruptly opened out. He paused at the exit and stuck his head out.

Beyond the cave was an enormous cavern. The ceiling was so high it was invisible, just black shadows up above him. He’d emerged at a low spot, so he couldn’t see much of the cavern itself. At his feet, four or five steps from the cave, the stone faded to black earth. A few steps past that, dry yellow grass sprouted out of the ground.

And beyond that, at the top of a small hill between Mollymauk and the rest of the cavern, was a small cottage with a twisted white tree out in front of it. The roof was straw, and the walls were mottled gray and black stone. There was light in the windows.

Molly exhaled. Then he moved towards the house.

The grass got taller and taller the farther he went from the cave exit. Soon it rose almost to his waist. There was no path, though when he got close, he saw a narrow gravel walkway snaking off down the hill in the other direction, towards fields and fields of yellow grass that covered the rest of the cavern. He thought he saw shapes out there, but he was more interested in the building.

Or, he was interested in the building until he was close enough to get a good look at the tree. The leaves were a green so dark they were almost black, in such a way that Mollymauk had never seen before. The bark was white, almost silver, with black streaks like cracks. It almost seemed to be glowing, though it might have been a trick of the light, wherever the light was coming from. But the bark and the leaves were nothing to the fruit hanging from the branches in bunches of two or three. Pomegranates. The most beautiful red pomegranates he’d ever seen.

His stomach growled. He had to have one.

There was a bench underneath the tree, and a book with a string poking out from between the pages. Molly ignored the book and climbed on the bench, stretching one hand upward. But the pomegranates were still just out of reach. He grabbed one of the branches and pulled himself up into the tree, where he settled on one of the stronger limbs. From there, he only needed to reach a little higher to grab a fruit.

He shouldn’t be doing this, and he knew it. But he and Jester used to spend afternoons eating from other people’s gardens, and part of the fun was getting caught and escaping punishment. Maybe he missed it, a little. When he got back to the valley of the gods, he’d ask Jester if she wanted to go swipe some apples again. And maybe he’d take her one of these pomegranates, too. One for her, one for Yasha, maybe one for Beau. Maybe Jester would share her pomegranate. He didn’t want to take too many.

It took some effort to get the fruit off the branch—he had to pull so hard he almost toppled out of the tree. But then it snapped off its stem, and he had it in his hands. He glanced at the house. No sign of trouble yet.

So, his tail flicking with glee, he settled back against the tree trunk, broke the pomegranate open with his fingernails, and started eating. Pomegranates weren’t normally his favorite—those little seeds were just _awful—_ but this one was just the perfect combination of sweet and tart, and the seeds weren’t so bad, not really. He’d eaten one half and was starting into the other when the door to the cottage creaked and someone said, “What are you doing here?”

Molly looked up. A man—a god, he realized a second later—stood in the doorway of the house. He didn’t wait to get a better look at him; he just leaped to the ground and ran.

“Wait!” the god called after him.

"You’ll have to catch me first!” Mollymauk called back, laughing.

“No—” The god said something else, but Molly was too far away to hear him at this point. He didn’t seem to be giving chase, not really. When Molly glanced over his shoulder, he saw that the stranger was trotting after him, looking distressed but not actually trying to catch up. Not that it mattered; Molly was fast. No one had ever beaten him in a race except for Beau. And Jester, once or twice. And Nott…

The point being, he was fast. He darted into the tunnel he’d come in through and raced towards the exit. But something was strange—the path seemed steeper than it had been coming in. Or, no, it wasn’t steeper, it was just… harder to climb somehow. Before long, his breath grew short. What? Why was he out of breath? He could run _way_ farther than this.

But his lungs weren’t filling all the way. Something was very wrong. His chest started to hurt, and he slowed to a trot. The light from the surface was just barely visible on the ceiling ahead of him but still the ache continued, climbing up the back of his throat. He could taste blood. Soon he was stumbling and then he stumbled to a halt, leaning on his elbow against the side of the cave and gasping for air. He was shivering, he realized. Cold. He was so cold. Why was it colder when he was closer to the surface?

His knees buckled and then he was on the floor. His muscles burned and his vision swam.

“Oh, no,” said a voice from behind him. He didn’t have the energy to look up. But as the footsteps drew closer, Molly suddenly found his breathing easier. The chill faded. Before he could leap to his feet again, though, the god from earlier stepped around him with his hands held out placatingly. “Please do not run again,” he said. “I am not able to go much farther than this. If you continue to the surface, you may fade entirely.”

Molly squinted up at him. He was a little on the short side and very much on the skinny side, with a noble nose and a sort of hollow face partially hidden in a short, scruffy beard. His hair, closer to red than brown, fell to his shoulders. Molly couldn’t tell what color his eyes were in the dim light.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Molly demanded. His throat was still aching.

The stranger looked uncomfortable. “You were eating one of my pomegranates,” he said, as if that had anything to do with the situation.

“Yes, and I’m very sorry, I… I won’t do it again.” Molly paused and swallowed. He kept having to pause mid-sentence to breathe. “I’ll pay you back for it, I promise. Will you _please_ … let me go now?”

“It is not me keeping you here,” the stranger began.

“Then who _is?_ ”

“Not a who,” he said. “It is, well… difficult to explain. You… belong to this place now.” He gestured back down the tunnel. “To the underworld.”

A cold feeling washed through Molly’s veins. “That was the underworld?”

The stranger nodded.

“But—gods don’t die… do they? What were you doing down there?”

"I am not dead,” the man said. “I live there. I… well, my name is not often spoken. Bad luck, I believe. You may call me Caleb. I… am closely linked to the underworld, tasked with ruling the dead.”

“What?” That cold wave returned, and Mollymauk hesitated, but he couldn’t think of a way to say his question. He couldn’t catch onto any one thought for long enough to say it aloud.

"You cannot leave,” the man told him, his tone heavy with sorrow. “You belong to the underworld, now that you have eaten of it.”

"You mean I belong to _you?_ You said those were your pomegranates. Is this some sick kind of debt?”

The stranger folded his arms, his shoulders tense. “The underworld and the shades are not mine. The tree is, and the fruit, but not the realm itself. I am… more of a keeper than anything else. And, as I said, I am not the one binding you to the realm.” He paused, and his eyebrows drew together, almost shadowing his eyes. “It’s… difficult to explain, and while I am stronger here than you are, it is difficult for me to be this close to the surface. If you will return with me, we can sit down and discuss this at length.”

Molly glanced towards the light again. “Can’t I at least run and tell my friends where I’ll be? They’ll start getting worried soon.” No, they wouldn’t even know anything was wrong for a month or more, would they? Damn it.

The stranger shook his head. “You will disappear if you do.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Molly studied the stranger’s—Caleb’s—face. He seemed serious. He didn’t _look_ like he had any ulterior motives. He looked… gods, he just looked tired.

Molly took another deep breath. “All right,” he said.

Caleb offered him a hand up, but Molly ignored it and pushed himself to his feet. Caleb didn’t seem surprised—he wordlessly turned and started back down the tunnel.

Molly spared one last glance towards the sky he could no longer see. Then, with no other options, he followed Caleb.


	3. Chapter 3

The inside of Caleb’s cottage was… cozy, Molly supposed. Wooden floor, stone walls, a hearth with a spit and a hook for roasting or cooking with kettles or pots. The ceiling was low and there was a doorway in the back that probably led to the rest of the house. The whole floor was one room, lit by an iron chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Molly was a little worried about that—candles and straw roofs weren’t a great combination, and most everything in here looked to be made of wood—but Caleb didn’t seem all that worried.

Just inside the front door was a small living area, with rocking chair and an armchair sitting on top of a worn red rug in front of a fireplace. Other than that, there wasn’t much to speak of. A bookshelf. Some jars where Caleb probably kept flour or oil. Normal house things. What caught Molly’s attention, though, were the table and three stools that sat near the wood stove.

“Who else lives here?” Molly asked.

Caleb, a few steps ahead of him, froze for just an instant. When he turned around, he saw Molly looking at the table. “Ah,” he said with some mixture of relief and… something sadder that Molly couldn’t quite name. “No one. It’s just me.”

“Oh. I can’t imagine you get a lot of visitors, though.”

Caleb gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “No, I would not say I do. The stools are… ah, wishful thinking, I suppose.”

 _Oh, so he’s lonely down here._ “All right,” Molly said out loud. He plopped down into the armchair near the fire and rested his elbow on his knee, and his chin on his fist. He didn’t feel quite so cold anymore, but there was still a pervasive chill to this place. It was a little more bearable next to the fireplace. “So, you said we’d talk here. What’s going on?”

For a moment Caleb stalled, puttering around to set the book from outside back on the bookshelf, and to push the stools under the table, and to fidget with a few other things around the room. He wasn’t looking Molly in the eye. Molly sat and stared at him until he ran out of little things to adjust and finally had no choice but to come sit in the rocking chair. As he was getting settled, movement drew Molly’s attention to the back doorway just as a brown tabby cat emerged.

Molly sat up. He liked cats. Caleb turned to see what he was staring at, and he smiled. “Ah. Frumpkin. Good timing.” He held out his hand and made a quiet clicking sound. The cat padded over and rubbed his face against Caleb’s hand for a moment, purring. But then he continued past, headed for Molly. Molly held out his hand and tried to imitate Caleb’s clicking noise. To his delight, Frumpkin rubbed against his hand, and then slid past to press against his leg. He was still purring.

Molly glanced up to see Caleb watching with a surprised smile. “Is he all right with being picked up?” Molly asked.

“Ah… you can try.” Caleb’s voice took a tone of puzzlement when he added, “He seems to like you.”

“Yeah, a lot of animals like me.” Molly carefully lifted the cat off the floor and set him in his lap. The cat shifted and squirmed for a moment before settling down and starting to purr again. Molly scratched between his ears. “Comes with being a fertility god, I think.”

“I see.” Caleb watched Molly and the cat for a moment. “Do you have anything specific you want to ask, or would you like me to just explain the situation as best I understand it?”

“Oh.” Molly put his hand on Frumpkin’s back. At least the cat was warm. “Well, just tell me what’s going on. Why couldn’t I leave?”

“That tree grew here in the underworld,” Caleb explained. “When a living creature eats food from the underworld, they become… tied to it, I suppose. I do not know why. The tree and its fruit are of the underworld. You ate the fruit, so you are bound to this place.”

“Is that what happened to you?”

Caleb looked down at his hands. “No. I… well, I was originally bound to this place for other reasons. I do not think it matters much whether I eat the food anymore. It would be like weighing me down when I am already at the bottom of the sea.”

The image sent a chill down Molly’s spine. He imagined Caleb standing with chains around his ankles and his feet half buried in silt, looking up at the dim light of the surface far above. “So, I’m stuck here? For how long? When will it wear off?”

“I do not know. It has been a long time since anyone living wandered down here. And it has been even longer since someone ate the food.”

“Well, how long was the last person down here?”

Caleb didn’t respond right away. “…He was a mortal,” he admitted after a moment. “He wandered the fields for several centuries, until he eventually joined the shades.”

“…Oh.” Molly hadn’t even had several centuries _above_ the surface. What were the chances this would never wear off? With one stupid snap decision, had he doomed himself to spend most of his existence underground? Would he ever see Yasha again? Jester? Beau? Would he ever see the _sun_ again? When he got back up above ground, would he even remember their faces?

“Are you all right?” Caleb asked, concerned. “You look pale.”

“It’s _freezing_ in here,” Molly deflected, because it really was. He considered stuffing his hands under Frumpkin, but he decided against it. The cat didn’t know him that well yet.

“Ah. Yes. You, ah… well, I guess I’ve gotten used to it.” Caleb moved to get up. “I should have a blanket around here somewhere…”

Molly, recognizing that Caleb was taking the opportunity to change the subject, spoke up. “Ah-ah-ah! Sit back down, we’re not done yet.” Remarkably, Caleb obeyed. Mollymauk decided to keep pushing. “The last person who was here—What did you try when you were trying to get him out?”

“Everything.” Caleb exhaled. “I had tomes from the surface, I did my own research, he did research… we never found a way for him to leave. Last I heard from him, he was looking into reincarnation. Many souls go that route,” he added. “Though I don’t know if it would have worked for him. I have not seen him in a long time, so perhaps it did.” He exhaled. “I don’t know if it would work for you, since you are not a mortal. But if you choose to go that route, I will help you in any way I can.”

There was no way Molly was losing everything all over again. When he first woke up, he hadn’t realized how horrible it was to not know anything, to not know anyone, to be barely able to communicate. But he knew in hindsight that those had been the worst months of his life. So far.

He pushed the memories away. “Well, maybe the things that didn’t work for him would work for me.”

“Perhaps.” Caleb sighed. “But for now, it is getting late in the day. I need to sleep before we get into this all over again.”

Was it getting late? Molly couldn’t tell. Also… “What do you mean, you _need_ to sleep? Gods don’t need to sleep.” They _could,_ but they didn’t have to.

“This one does.” Caleb pushed himself out of the chair and took a step towards the stairs. “I will show you the rest of the house. If you do not plan to sleep, then hopefully I have something you can pass the time with.”

This wasn’t the answer Molly wanted, but he could tell by Caleb’s expression that pushing wouldn’t help. If he pushed, he might risk breaking something. He couldn’t lose Caleb’s goodwill right now—it was all he had. “All right,” he muttered, gathering up Frumpkin and getting to his feet.

The doorway in the back of the main room led to a narrow hallway lined with several doors. “This leads to my chambers,” Caleb told Molly, briefly touching one door as they passed it. “If you cannot find me anywhere else, I may be there. Please knock before you come in.” He moved to the next door and said with a hint of pride, “This is the library. I spend most of my time here, when I am able. You may feel free to read anything you find there.”

“Mm,” Molly replied noncommittally. Judging by the size of the house, the rest of these rooms couldn’t be all that big. And he wasn’t interested in libraries, anyway. It wasn’t like he could read anything in them. Not that Caleb needed to know that just yet.

“The rest of these doors lead to different parts of the underworld,” Caleb said. “If you go through one, I only ask that you stay in sight of the doorway. There are… dangerous spirits in certain places, and it is easy to get lost.” He paused and turned to face Mollymauk. “And… that is it, I’m afraid.”

“Are you serious? There’s nowhere else for me to go in here?”

“No,” Caleb said. “I’m afraid not.”

Molly thought hard for a minute. “Fine,” he decided. “I guess I might as well sleep.” He didn’t want to be alone in this place for hours on end. “Where can I do that?”

Caleb hesitated. “I… well, I cannot easily affect the structure of the building. I could find you a bedroll, or a cot, or a—well, I suppose I could find a hammock, if you prefer to sleep in the open air?”

“I don’t know, I think I’d rather be inside.” He didn’t want to sleep under that yawning black ceiling. There weren’t even any stars.

“All right. Well, then I can—would you prefer to be in the main room? I could also find a place for you in the library.”

“Ech. No. I’ll sleep in the main room, I guess. On the floor?”

Caleb winced. “Hopefully only for one night. I will find some better arrangements for you”.”

Molly perked up. “Better arrangements? Is there somewhere else I could stay?”

“Ah, no. Not really. There are other structures here, but they are meant for the shades. I imagine you would be welcome in the City of the Blessed, but I rarely venture there, myself, so I could not tell you what it is like for a god. The place for the punished… I would not recommend ever visiting it. And the rest of this place is… well, nothing particularly interesting.” He gestured vaguely. “Fields of shades, waiting for others to join them or for their own rebirth.”

“Oh.” Molly didn’t have much to say to that. Caleb didn’t seem all that inclined to make further conversation, either. Molly followed him into what looked like a storeroom and studied his back while he gathered things up. There was a heaviness to him, Molly decided. In his eyes, in the set of his shoulders. He seemed old, even if he didn’t look it. He had to be, if he ruled the dead. But Molly had never heard of any god called Caleb, let alone a chthonic deity. And he couldn’t imagine that there were too many of them. There were different gods for different groups of people, sure, but he understood that underworld gods tended to keep their jobs for a very long time. It was a role that nobody envied.

This bothered him all while he set up his place on the stone floor—“I have some pelts,” Caleb remembered, and disappeared into the back room, to return later with an armful of fur. Molly rather liked fur, so he accepted the offering and started to make himself a slightly cozier spot close to the fireplace. Caleb stood awkwardly off to one side for a minute before wishing him a good night and retreating into the back hallway. Frumpkin, who had been watching the proceedings with interest, joined him.

It only took Molly another minute to finish setting up his bedding. He sat and studied it for a minute, wishing he was back on that hill with Jester instead. If only he’d gone home with her, instead of running off again.

He shook his head. Nothing he could do about the past. The chill from the stone floor seemed to seep through the fur and pillows, threatening to soak right through to his bones. And the dying embers of the fire didn’t provide much heat, or any light at all. After several minutes of trying to get comfortable on his side or his stomach, Molly rolled onto his back and studied the ceiling. He'd been twice buried alive, now. Not the most promising record. But he’d clawed his way out of his tomb before, and he’d damn well do it again.


	4. Caduceus

Caduceus didn’t wake with a start, but he did wake unexpectedly and all at once. He opened his eyes and stayed where he was for a minute, lying on his side and looking at the far wall of his room in the Blooming Grove. What had woken him? Not a sound, no. Some sort of… frankly gross sort of feeling. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Now that he’d noticed it, he realized it had been building for all of the day before.

He sat up and heaved a sigh. Early sunlight streamed through the open window next to his bed. The air was damp and cool, but not any more damp and cool than it normally was. A bird twittered somewhere outside.

Caduceus got to his feet and went about his routine. He dressed, pushed all of his pink hair over to the correct side, braided a few strands of it just for the familiarity. Then he went out into the living room.

The fireplace had burned down to a pile of embers. He added kindling, poked at the coals, waited for the sticks to catch. He stayed there, adding wood, for a few minutes. The only sound was from the birds outside, the occasional hush of the tree leaves, and the kindling popping in the hearth. Once he had a decent fire going, he set a kettle on the hook above it and went to choose some tea from the cabinet.

Once the water had boiled, he poured himself the tea and sat on a bench outside the temple to enjoy it. The sun had burned off most of the morning fog. The grass was almost dry, as well. The blades caught the light, turning the grass a bright, almost violent green. The flowers on the graves bobbed in the breeze.

Something was very wrong. He wasn’t sure what. Caduceus sipped his tea, studying the graves. From time to time he got spirits returning here to try and retrieve their bodies, hoping to still make some sort of impact on the living world. But that wasn’t the feeling he was getting. It wasn’t as if something had arrived that shouldn’t be there. It felt… well, it felt more like something important was gone.

He finished his tea, set the cup inside, and went to wander the graves for a little while. None of them looked as if they’d been disturbed. And the farther he went, the more he got the feeling that this absence didn’t have much to do with the Blooming Grove. Something else was missing. But what?

Caduceus found a shady spot under a tree and sat down cross-legged on the damp grass. He put his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, straightened his spine, and just breathed, focusing on his senses. The smell of the dirt and the green, the air moving across his skin, the warmth from the sun poking through the tree leaves. The birds. The sound of the wind. All evidence of something even higher than the gods.

From time to time he got this feeling when someone tried to control something that was beyond them. A king trying to bottle Life. A god trying to suppress the tides. A hero destroying some grand beast. There might not be a way to tell what exactly was gone until it started to impact everything else. This felt like it was going to be a big one.

Which led him to the question of what to do about it. He hadn’t made a habit of getting involved with these things. They rarely had anything to do with him. And most of the time, there wasn’t any way he could help. He could, maybe, wait for Fjord to notice. But it hadn’t been that long since Fjord asked for his help in understanding all of this. He might not notice for a while. And Caduceus didn’t have much of a way with communicating with the rest of the gods. He didn’t often need to.

It seemed like his only choice was to go looking.

So, Caduceus got to his feet, touched the tree in thanks, and headed back into the temple. He gathered up a few things for the trip—tea, another set of clothes, some ties for more braids, some cups and a small kettle—and all of it went into a bag that he slung over his shoulder. He took his staff from beside the door and tapped the crystal against the wall. It buzzed faintly. He smiled.

He took the time to explain to the plants where he was going, and he made sure to spread the news to a few of the bees, as well. They would carry the message that the grove was empty, for now. It would be protected while he was gone.

At the gate, he paused. The shadows looked darker beyond the grove.

He took a deep breath. “Wildmother, guide my path,” he murmured. Then he stepped through the gate.


	5. Chapter 5

Molly did not get any sleep. He spent a couple of hours lying there with the conviction to just get up at sunrise, before he realized that sunrise wasn’t coming. How was he supposed to tell when it was morning? Hell, how had Caleb known it was nighttime? Had he just been trying to avoid any more questions?

Irritation bubbled up in Molly’s mind. He sat up and glared out the window, but there was nothing there to glare at.

He needed to do something, or he was going to go insane. He threw his blankets aside and went into the back hallway. It wasn’t any darker back there than it was anywhere else—despite the lack of lights, everything was easy enough to see. Molly looked around at the doors, trying to remember which one led where. The first one on the left was Caleb’s chambers, he remembered, and the second one on the right was the library. He wasn’t going in there unless he was truly desperate.

Time to go wandering the underworld?

Mollymauk opened the second door on the left and poked his head out. A soft breeze ruffled his hair, and for a second his hopes lifted. Then he realized that this door only led to those yellowing fields of grass. It was still a little cold, but no worse than the inside of Caleb’s house. Strange. He stepped through the door and looked back. To his relief, the door was not just sitting by itself, cut out of thin air. It was set into the stone wall of the cavern.

He looked back out at the field. There were shapes moving over the grass, humanoid shapes. What had Caleb called them? Shades? Caduceus had talked about shades from time to time, and Molly had gathered that they were the remnants of dead people, but in a different way than the physical remains. A spirit without a body.

But people were people. He headed towards them. The grass only came up to his knees in some places, while in others, he was wading through it up to his waist. He hoped there was nothing down here that he could accidentally step on. But everything was dead here, anyway, so did it even matter?

The people didn’t get any clearer as he got closer. They were still shapes, colorless and nearly see-through, but he could tell they were people even if he couldn’t see their faces. He waved and called, “Hello, there!”

The shades closest to him turned to look, but none of them replied. Molly continued wading towards them, and as he drew closer, he realized they seemed to be drifting towards him. “Hello,” he tried again. “How’s your day going?” Stupid. They probably didn’t even notice days passing anymore. He amended, “What are your names?”

But the shades only looked at him. He could _almost_ see their faces. Shadows and highlights that might have been eyes and noses and mouths. But maybe it was just his eyes tricking him.

“Okay,” he said. “Is there anyone… I don’t know, livelier that I could talk to?”

_Old._

It wasn’t a word or an image as much as a concept. And it wasn’t as if the shades had said it aloud—the idea just appeared in his head.

“You’re old?” Molly replied. “You’ve been here a while?”

_Yes._

“Are newer shades less…” He gestured to them. “Vague?”

A brief spark, like something that might have once been called a laugh. Another _yes._

“What are your names?”

He didn’t get a direct answer, but he got the sense that they were a little confused. A little frustrated. There was an empty spot where something had used to be. A name, an identity, blurred like a tapestry with a design too faded to see.

“You don’t remember?” he guessed.

Frustration. _Yes._

“Can I give you a name?”

Another spark. Gratitude. But no.

“…All right. My name is Mollymauk, for what it’s worth.”

The name rolled around between the shades. Warmth. A good name. Gratitude.

“Do you know where I can find some newer shades?” Molly asked them. “You all are a delight, and I’d love to come back and visit, but I want to ask some questions about this place and it doesn’t sound like you all will have the answers I’m looking for.”

One of the shades seemed to point. Or, Molly thought they were pointing. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll be back to talk to you again. Or, will you still be here?”

 _Always here,_ they responded. _Always here…_

“All right. I’ll be back, then.” Molly tried not to pay attention to the unease squirming in his gut. He put on a smile and trotted off through the grass, waving at the shades until they were out of sight. And—though it might have just been his imagination—he could have sworn a couple of them waved back.

He spotted a few other groups of shades, but none of them seemed any better than the shades he’d already talked to. After a while he was able to tell just from their appearances that they were all old. Some of them drifted towards him, and he waved, but he didn’t stop to talk. He walked and walked and walked, looking for someone more solid, until he realized that he could see a small building in the distance. Another house? He picked up his pace.

But as he drew closer, he slowed down again. He started to make out the straw roof, and the tree out in front. That wasn’t another house, that was _Caleb’s_ house. Damn it! He looked around, but as far as he could see, there was only the grass and a few shades. And Caleb’s little cottage.

Resigned, he crossed the rest of the distance, climbed the hill, and opened the door. The front room was still dark. As far as he could tell, the blankets hadn’t been disturbed. He couldn’t have been gone that long, so Caleb was probably still asleep.

Molly poked his head into the back hallway. One of the doors was slightly ajar and orange-gold light spilled through the opening, making a line across the floor and up onto the opposite wall.

He trotted down the hall, opened the door, and poked his head into one of the biggest rooms he’d ever been in. It was as grandiose as a temple—high ceilings held up by huge columns, with torches crackling every few feet and chandeliers lighting the open space in the middle. He stepped inside, gaping.

And a second later he knew what this room was, because the smell of it hit him—old paper and glue and leather and dust. He was on a stone balcony that wrapped around most of the room, and he could see rows of bookshelves retreating into the shadows. Down below, on the first floor, there was an open space with several tables all littered with books and scrolls and papers. A lone figure stood with both hands braced on a table. He was too far away for Molly to make out his face, but who else could it possibly be?

“Caleb?” Molly called down. His voice echoed a little through the space.

Caleb looked up, spotted Molly, and straightened. “Ah! I was wondering where you’d gone.” Frumpkin, who had been curled up on the table next to him, lifted his head and made an irritated noise.

“I was bored, so I went to have a look around.” Molly gripped the railing and leaned out to twist around and look up. There was another balcony above him. Another layer of books, no doubt. “What the hell is this place? Are we still in the cottage?”

“Yes,” Caleb replied. “It is much bigger on the inside. Would you come down? I’m not used to shouting.”

It took a minute, but Molly found a staircase and made his way down to Caleb. By the time he got there, Caleb was bent over his books again. “I have been looking through my old notes,” he said. Beside him, Frumpkin rose and stretched. “It’s… a little frustrating, I’ll admit, to be working on an old problem again and not have any new information.”

“So sorry,” Molly told him, rolling his eyes. Caleb’s biggest problem was an old puzzle. How awful for him.

Caleb didn’t notice the sarcasm. “Nothing drew you here, did it? No voice, nobody offered you something if you could retrieve a soul from the underworld?”

“Nope, I wandered down here all by myself.” Frumpkin padded across the table to Molly and meowed insistently. Molly scratched him behind the ears. Frumpkin started to purr.

“I see.” Caleb picked up a piece of paper and half tossed it to one side. “All right, at least that is not something to worry about, then. I should try to make that entrance, ah… a little less appealing, to try and deter visitors.”

Molly moved his hand to scratch Frumpkin under his chin and considered what he could have seen in the cave that might have made him turn around. A dead end, maybe. Some skeletons might have made him _more_ curious. “You could take the torches down,” he suggested. “Make it look more natural.”

“Possibly.” Caleb shook his head. “That is an issue for later, though. You are here, and we need to get you out.”

“So, what ideas do you have? Some magic bond-cutting sword?”

“Ah… I am afraid not.”

“A blessing, or something? A spell?”

“I do not have anything like that, no.”

“Do you know anyone who might?”

“If I did, there would still be the issue of how to contact them.”

“What, can’t you send a message, or something?”

“I can try,” Caleb said. “I have… never really been able to contact anyone else from this place. Nothing lends itself very well to communication between the lands of the dead and the living. It is much easier for things to enter this place than it is for them to leave.”

“Is there anything you could try?” Molly asked.

“Well, I cannot go above the surface. I could try sending Frumpkin with a written note, but I am not so sure he will be able to find anyone specific. The valley of the gods is far from here, no?”

It was. Damn. “You study the arcane, though, don’t you?” He gestured to the stacks of spellbooks and research tomes on the desk. “Can’t you just send them a message that way?”

Caleb shook his head regretfully. “I can only send a message for a few hundred paces.”

“So, I’m stuck down here and I don’t even have a way to _talk to_ anyone? Doesn’t anyone ever come here?” Something occurred to him. “And how do you know about the other gods if you haven’t left here?”

“The shades do not talk to me, but they do not care if I listen to them talk to each other. I’ve heard of Yasha, and Jester, and Beaureard, of Fjord… Veth even comes to visit me, sometimes.”

“Veth?” Molly repeated.

“You would know her as Nott.” Caleb set aside a paper and started sorting through a stack of books as the talked. “She calls herself Veth here. She visits the underworld and searches for her husband, though I’ve told her time and again that he is not here.” He shut his eyes for a brief second before he shook his head, like he could shake the thoughts loose. “Would you hand me that book?”

Molly obliged, and then leaned against the table and thought. Nott—Veth—hadn’t ever mentioned visiting the underworld. She hadn’t mentioned anyone named Caleb, either. He hadn’t even known she was married. Well, that she _had been_ married. How come it had never come up? He knew all about Zuala, and it wasn’t like most gods kept their mortal lives secret…

“—and… Mollymauk?”

Caleb had been talking while Molly was lost in thought. He was looking at Molly now. Molly raised his eyebrows and crossed his arms. “What?”

“I, ah…” He paused. “Where did you stop listening?”

“When I handed you the book, actually.”

Caleb vented a sigh and turned his attention back to his table. “Never mind. It is probably not important for you to know all of the specifics.”

“Probably not,” Molly agreed. “Is there anything I can do to make this go faster?”

“I suppose not.” Caleb raked his fingers through is hair, pushing it back out of his face. Almost immediately, it drifted forward again over his forehead. Molly fought the urge to reach over and run a hand through it, himself. Caleb’s hair looked as soft as Jester’s. The sudden reminder pinched his heart.

“Should I stay here?” he asked, to try and distract himself from the hurt.

“You do not have to. It will be a little while before I come up with anything. I will call you if I need you.”

Molly swished his tail. “So… should I just wander around while I wait?”

“If you want. You can read anything you find.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like much fun. I was thinking more about wandering the underworld. The doors go different places, right?”

“Yes.” Caleb finally looked up. “Just so you are aware, the final door on the left leads to the Halls of the Damned. I… would not recommend ever visiting, it is not a place fit for someone like you to be in.”

“Someone like me?” Molly repeated, arching an eyebrow.

Caleb seemed to catch the edge to his voice. “Ah—no. I only meant it is… cheerless. I do not think you would enjoy it. The souls imprisoned there…” He looked down again. “They will remain there for eternity, never to wander the fields or rejoin the living in new lives.”

“Well, they sound like a fun bunch of people.”

“They are not, I can assure you.”

Molly heaved a sigh and wandered away towards the stairs. It was going to be a long wait down here if Caleb was his only audience. Every time he tried for a joke, or some levity, it seemed to go right over his head. This place seemed like it fit him perfectly. Dry, cold, dusty. No wonder he'd never left.

At the top of the stairs, Molly paused and looked back down. Caleb was completely absorbed in his work.

Frumpkin meowed at Molly’s feet. Molly hadn’t noticed him following him up the stairs. He bent down and picked him up. “Maybe I should just tell _you_ my jokes,” he said, bouncing the cat like a baby. “Or I can juggle for you. At least you might enjoy it a little bit.”

Frumpkin nuzzled his arm and started to purr.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of setup in this chapter, I promise there's more coming


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cw for a reference to self-harm in this chapter
> 
> (forgot to put this disclaimer but there's No beta on this or basically anything i write, so. typos do happen)

The day passed agonizingly slow. Molly sat in the tree for a while, but it wasn’t as nice as sitting in trees out in the sunlight. He tried talking to a few more shades. He even got a couple of them to laugh. He wished he had something to juggle. Maybe he could put on his own little show, see how many shades he could draw in. That drew up an image of his own personal carnival out in the fields. The idea made him laugh.

After a while, though, he started to get bored and hungry. The boredom was hardly a new feeling, but didn’t get hungry all that often. When he was out in the wilds, he usually ate whatever food he found growing. This had led to some unpleasant nights, because just because he _could_ eat something, it didn’t necessarily mean he _should_. And when he was in the cities, well, people usually just shared food with him, and in exchange, he gave a little blessing to make sure there was plenty to go around.

But he hadn’t eaten anything since that pomegranate. After a few minutes of debating with himself, he remembered Caleb saying something about how he didn’t think it mattered if someone ate the food here, if they were already tied to the underworld. So, he went looking for food.

To his surprise, the kitchen was pretty well-stocked. He found rice, spices, meat, and even some root vegetables, stored in a cellar that he found after a half hour of searching. He hadn’t done much cooking back on the surface, but he had enough experience to make himself a meal. Even if he had to pause partway through when he remembered the importance of garlic.

At least the stove worked. If he stood close enough to it, he could catch some of the warmth. And the sound of the sizzling oil filled the whole front room. And the smell of it was amazing—the cooking meat, and the garlic, onions, some thyme… and a few other things that he didn’t know the names of. But he’d tasted them, shrugged, and added a little. He could only hope it would taste as good as it smelled.

Frumpkin clawed at his boots and made a demanding noise. “I don’t think this would be good for you,” Molly told him. “If you want something to eat, go ask Caleb.”

Frumpkin grumbled and trotted off around the corner. Two minutes later, Caleb appeared in the doorway with Frumpkin on his heels. “Oh,” he said. “I was smelling food earlier, but I couldn’t think where it might be coming from.”

“What, you thought I ordered something from the cook?” Molly started to pile his food onto a plate. It was halfway full when he lost the fight against his better judgement and asked, “You want some?”

Caleb had drifted off in his own thoughts. “Hm?”

“I said, do you want some food?”

“I—yes, if you don’t mind sharing, I’d like to try a little. I… thought you were making it for yourself.”

 _I was,_ Molly didn’t say out loud. If it came down to eating by himself or sharing a smaller portion with someone else… well, it was always better to share food. Everything tasted better when you weren’t eating alone. He scraped the other half onto another plate and offered it to Caleb. He took it with a quiet thank-you.

Instead of going to the table, Caleb sat in the rocking chair by the fire. Molly sat cross-legged on the floor nearby.

“Why are you sitting on the floor?” Caleb asked.

Molly, his mouth full, shrugged. Frumpkin came up and sniffed his plate, but Caleb snapped his fingers. Frumpkin disappeared and reappeared on his shoulders, looking grumpy. “That is not for you,” Caleb scolded him.

“How’d you do that?” Molly asked with his mouth still full.

“Ah. He is not an actual cat,” Caleb explained. “He is a familiar. I can control him, to an extent, and I can see through his eyes if he is not too far away from me.”

“Show me.”

Caleb put down his plate and shut his eyes for a moment. Frumpkin, on his shoulders, sat up a little straighter. Caleb opened his eyes to reveal that they were glowing solid orange. Frumpkin blinked, and then his eyes glowed the same. Faint orange light drifted from both their eyes like steam.

Molly held up his hand. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two,” Caleb said. “I should mention, I can only hear you through Frumpkin, in this state.”

“Huh. Could you feel it if someone pinched you?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.” Molly tapped his tail against the floor. “You can stop now.”

Caleb blinked. The glow disappeared. He picked up his plate and started eating again.

“…Doesn’t it hurt?” Molly asked after a minute.

“No, it does not hurt either of us.” Caleb took another bite of his food and glanced at Molly out of the corner of his eye. “If you don’t mind, may I ask you a question now?”

“Go ahead.”

“What… caused those scars?”

Molly looked down at the raised lines—some pale, some dark—marking the tops of his arms, the front of his neck, and what little of his chest was visible with his shirt mostly unbuttoned. “Oh. Well, most of them, I did myself.”

Caleb went very still. His eyes seemed fixed on the scars.

“It’s a magic thing,” Molly hurried to assure him. “I use blood magic. Not often, but enough times that the scars make a pretty impressive tally. Just a little nick, some blood, and I cast the effect. I can show you, if you want.”

“No, I believe you.” Caleb absently scratched at his forearm, as if something itched under his sleeve. Molly realized for the first time that all he had seen of Caleb’s body was his head and his hands. Even in his own home, Caleb wore lots of layers. The coat, a tunic, and just visible under it, a white shirt. Pants. Boots. Scarf. Even his face was partially hidden by his beard. It was a wonder he didn’t walk around in a hood.

They finished eating, and Molly headed outside to climb the tree again. Might as well enjoy the pomegranates while he was here.

As he sat and picked at the seeds, his thoughts turned to Caleb once again. How small did a person have to feel, to hide himself like he did even in a place without a single other living soul? Or maybe he didn’t normally dress like this, and he was wearing all the layers because there _was_ another living soul around. If that was the case, maybe he’d loosen up with time. Molly sure hoped he would. He was curious what Caleb looked like under all of that. Even with the beard, he could tell the man was decently handsome. And he had interesting eyes. Tired eyes, sure, but there was an intensity to them that Molly didn’t see in a lot of people. What would it feel like to have all that focus on himself? He’d had always loved being the center of attention. Even if there was only one person in the audience, the center was the center, wasn’t it?

He looked back down towards the house. The lights were still on in the front room. Time for a little experiment.

He hopped down out of the tree and headed back inside. At some point while he was out in the tree, Caleb had lit the fireplace. Now he sat in the rocking chair, unmoving, watching the flames with his elbow on the chair's arm and his knuckles pressed against his mouth. He looked even more tired than usual.

“Hey,” Molly said. “You mind if I do some of my exercises in here? I’d do them outside, but it’s too cold.”

Caleb didn’t look up. “Go ahead.”

Hm. Okay. Molly started out with stretches he’d learned in the human world, and added a few Beau had taught him. He thought a few of them were pretty spectacular—he was flexible as hell, and he liked showing it off. He did a split, did another split, did a back-bend and pulled his legs up and over and landed up on his feet. Caleb only glanced over once.

It was a start. Molly set his coat aside and tipped forward into a handstand. Caleb still didn’t look over. Molly thought for a minute. How funny would it be if he walked all the way over to Caleb and said hello upside-down? That had to get _some_ sort of response. Surely Caleb hadn't seen too many people wander around with their feet in the air. He wasn’t the best at walking on his hands, but he’d done it before.

He took two steps and immediately realized that this might be a mistake. His balance wavered, and he resisted the urge to kick his legs forward and stand up to try again. No, he could do this. He took another step. Okay, maybe he couldn't do this. There was no way he was strong enough to make it all the way over; his arms were already tired. And his weight was too far forward. Beau made it look so easy! He wavered, and wobbled, and his stomach dropped as he realized he was going down. There was nothing he could do—he toppled forward with a yelp and landed flat on his face.

 _That_ got Caleb’s attention. He startled to his feet. “Mollymauk! Are you all right?”

“Ugh. Yeah, I’m fine.” Molly rolled onto his back, sat up, and laughed. “ _Damn,_ that hurt!” His knees and elbows were aching, and he hadn’t been able to keep his cheekbone from hitting the floor. He rubbed his face with one hand.

“Are you injured?” Caleb came over to hover nearby, his eyes worried. Frumpkin trotted up and sniffed Molly’s knee.

“I’ve had worse.” Molly rolled his shoulder and laughed at himself again. The muscles in his arms were burning. “Should’ve known better than to try walking.”

“Walking?” Caleb repeated, confused.

“On my hands. Watch.” Molly got to his feet and made to repeat the handstand, but Caleb put out an arm to stop him. His hand was cold.

“You do not have to show me, I believe you.”

“But I want to show you! It’s not that hard.”

“Later, then, maybe. And not here. It’s a small miracle you did not catch the table on your way down.”

Molly looked over at the table and three stools. He’d barely noticed it when he tossed his coat over it. “I guess,” he conceded. “I could’ve broken it, huh?”

“I am more worried about _it_ breaking _you._ ” Caleb seemed to realize suddenly that he was still standing close to Molly. He quickly stepped away. “I should probably thank you for pulling me out of my thoughts, at least. I have sat and stared at that fire all night before." He gave a nervous laugh. "I should go sleep. Do you need anything before that?”

Molly pulled his coat back on and rubbed his arms, trying to warm himself up again. “I’m all right. Gonna have some bruises, but like I said, I’ve had worse. You should hear about some of the things I got up to back on the surface.”

He’d hoped to draw out a few questions, but Caleb only nodded. “I am glad you are all right. Hopefully, I will find something useful to you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Molly agreed. “Good night, I guess. Is it night?”

“It’s night,” Caleb assured him.

“How can you tell, down here?”

“I have a good sense of time.” Caleb was moving backwards, trying to subtly retreat back into the hallway. Molly decided to let it drop for now. “Good night,” he said.

“Good night.” Caleb vanished around the corner.

And then Molly was alone in the front room except for the crackling fire, and Frumpkin. He dropped into the armchair, smiling. Frumpkin trotted over and hopped up onto his lap. There, he walked his front legs up to Molly’s shoulder and rested against his chest. Molly smiled and ran a hand down his back. “Well,” he said. “I wanted to get his attention. I’d say that was a mission accomplished.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two chapters in one day because uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


	7. Caleb

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some self-hatred in this one, because, it's early Caleb........

The only light in Caleb’s room came from a candle on his nightstand. He shut the door behind himself and let out a deep sigh. And he stood there for a little while, staring at the floorboards, letting his mind run in circles, waiting for it to settle before he started to get ready for bed.

A scratching at the door caught his attention. He turned the knob and pulled the door open just far enough that Frumpkin could slip through. The cat crossed the room and hopped up onto the covers. Caleb smiled wearily and started to dress for bed. He took off his boots, his coat, his scarf, his tunic, leaving him barefoot in his trousers and shirt. Then he climbed onto the covers, folded his hands on his stomach, and stared at the ceiling.

That moment had scared the hell out of him. When he heard the thud—unmistakably the sound of a person hitting the floor—his mind had flashed back to Astrid’s parents. Watching them collapse. His first fear was that Mollymauk had collapsed, somehow poisoned by this place. Or the food. Or something.

But then Molly had rolled over and sat up and _laughed._ He’d been fine. He’d just fallen while doing a trick. And Caleb had stood there like an idiot with his heart beating in his throat, feeling weak with relief.

He hoped he hadn’t been too fussy over it. The last thing he wanted was to alienate Mollymauk by worrying over him too much or acting too friendly when they weren’t friends. He was trying not to seem as desperate for companionship as he was. It wasn’t Mollymauk’s fault he was the first person in decades to come here and stay here. Caleb loved Veth, he really did, but she always left. She had other matters to attend to. _Mollymauk_ had other matters to attend to. He hadn’t asked to be here. It wasn’t his choice to talk to Caleb, it was just that he had nobody else to talk to.

So, would it be better to talk to him? Maybe just when he started a conversation. He seemed like he preferred talking over silence. He seemed as if he was used to having whole crowds of people to talk to, instead of just one tired lord of the dead. Maybe he would do better in the City of the Blessed, instead of a tiny, isolated house.

Caleb rolled over and groaned into his pillow. Frumpkin studied him for a moment, and then made his way over the bedclothes and batted at Caleb’s shoulder. Caleb turned his head to study him speculatively. Should he send Frumpkin out to check on Mollymauk? He might object to that. This wouldn’t be a problem if Caleb hadn’t told him about how he could see through Frumpkin’s eyes, but he’d felt it was only fair that Mollymauk knew how to spot that. It wouldn’t do for him to get suspicious about being watched without his knowledge. And Caleb had figured it would remove any temptation on his part. It was a calming thing, to watch Mollymauk at ease.

And then his mind pulled towards that first time he saw Mollymauk. Sitting in the tree outside the house, easy as anything, his tail swinging like he was exactly where he wanted to be—exactly where he was meant to be. Holding the pomegranate in his hands like two halves of a heart.

For a moment, Caleb had been transfixed, pinned in place, mesmerized by this bright, unfamiliar creature that seemed at once so at home and so, so wrong to be in this place. He hadn't been able to stop the words before they left him: “What are you doing here?”

And then Mollymauk looked at him, his eyes as red as the pomegranate. In that instant, Caleb realized that he was eating one of the fruits from the tree, and he realized what that meant, and he watched in horror as Mollymauk popped another seed into his mouth.

And then Mollymauk had leaped down from the tree and run away. Caleb hadn’t followed quickly, he’d known the intruder wouldn’t get far. And the rest was… not worth thinking about.

Was it his fault this had happened? He’d known how dangerous the tree was, that it was tempting for anyone who might see it. He’d gotten lazy, stopped keeping an eye on it. He’d been reading on that bench not ten minutes before Mollymauk must have arrived. He’d thought of something in the library and gone inside to check for it. And when he came back out…

Stupid. Stupid, stupid, complacent, lazy—nobody had come here in so long, and he’d thought that made it okay to relax. And then this happened. And it was all his fault.

Frumpkin meowed for attention and rubbed his head against Caleb’s shoulder. Caleb absently ran a hand over his back. The touch grounded him, a little. He realized he’d been holding his breath. He made himself exhale again, before he got lightheaded. Did gods even get lightheaded?

 _Gods don’t need to sleep,_ Mollymauk had said.

If only he knew. But maybe he wouldn’t mind? Caleb had sensed the warmth that Mollymauk left behind himself like a wake among the shades in the Fields. For the first time any of them could remember, they had felt seen. They'd loved him. There were gods who thought of mortals only as playthings, as inconveniences, as something that rightfully held higher creatures like themselves in fear and awe. Mollymauk didn’t seem to feel that way.

But then, maybe it would be different for a not-quite-god. It was an ugly thing, to be immortal but still human. He still hadn’t decided whether it was a blessing or a curse that he had stopped aging. He’d be a mind trapped in a pile of dust by this point. A blessing, then, it had to be a blessing. Then again, if he’d been a pile of dust, maybe his memories wouldn’t be so vivid, maybe it would be a little better…

Frumpkin meowed again, sounding almost scolding. Caleb looked down at him and offered a thin smile. “I know, old friend,” he said in his own language, an older language than the one he spoke with Mollymauk. “I’m spinning downward again. I’ll try to get some rest.” He paused for a moment, stroking the cat’s back. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked. “Would you go and keep him company? If he gets lonely, come and wake me up. I’m not very good company, but it would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?” He huffed. “Maybe he’d show me that trick he was trying to do. He seems to like an audience.”

Frumpkin rubbed the top of his head against Caleb’s cheek one more time. Caleb patted him and murmured a thank you. Then the cat hopped down and vanished through the still-closed door. One corner of Caleb’s mouth twitched. Frumpkin could do that, and yet he still chose to scratch and yowl when he wanted to be let in.

Caleb lifted one hand and snapped his fingers, and the candle flame flickered out. In the darkness, he rolled over and shut his eyes and prayed he wouldn’t dream.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's time for some Miscalculations

“See, I _told_ you I could get it!”

Frumpkin meowed. He was sitting a few feet away, tail flicking, watching Mollymauk try to relearn how to walk on his hands. He’d been at it all night. Probably. Who even knew, down here? A few of the shades had drifted over to watch, and one or two of them had even remembered how to applaud. Molly wished he had something to juggle, something else to do for entertainment. He did have his cards, so he could have done some fortunetelling, but the shades didn’t have much interest in their futures. One had agreed to let him try. The cards, unsettlingly, had been blank when he turned them over.

 _No future,_ the shade had explained. It had sounded like it was trying to be comforting, but mysteriously, it hadn’t been. Molly stacked the cards again and checked them one at a time. They looked like they always had. None of his work had been actually erased _._ He’d thought about trying to do a reading for himself, but decided against it. Fortunetelling like this wasn’t actually _real,_ anyway. And he didn’t want to think about what it could mean if the cards came up blank for him as well.

So, he was practicing his handstands for Frupmkin and the shades. He’d even managed to walk a couple of steps on his hands, before he fell again. And again. And again.

But he was improving! He made it four whole steps before he toppled over, this time. The shades shifted with worry, like they did every time, but he sat up and made a show of how all right he was. He was going to have some serious bruises by tomorrow. Maybe it was time to take a break.

Somewhere in the edge of his mind, he could hear the shades talking. They were a little harder to understand when they talked to each other; he got the impression that they were shouting, in a way, when they talked to him. He could only catch bits of what they said to each other. This time, he heard something about the City of the Blessed.

“What’s the City of the Blessed?” he asked. Caleb hadn't explained it much, and Molly had never seen the place.

The shades looked at him. _Blessed,_ one of them told hm.

 _Bright,_ said another.

 _You,_ said a third.

“Me?” Molly repeated in confusion.

There was frustration for a moment, more towards themselves than towards him. He wasn’t quite catching their meaning. _You,_ they tried again. _Us. Blessed, us. You, here, us, blessed. City of the Blessed._

“I don’t understand,” Molly said.

Caleb spoke up behind him: “They like you.”

Molly jumped and whirled around to find Caleb standing just behind Frumpkin, smiling wanly. “How long have you _been_ there?” he demanded.

“Not long,” Caleb said. “I did not want to interrupt, so I was waiting for you to finish your conversation. But I thought perhaps you might appreciate an interpreter.”

Molly looked back at the shades. They didn’t seem to be reacting much to Caleb. They weren’t even looking at him. Just used to him, maybe? “What were they saying?”

“They were, ah… offering a compliment,” Caleb told him. “Something like, ‘With you here, we are in the City of the Blessed.’”

“And...what’s the City of the Blessed?” Molly asked for what felt like the millionth time.

“Another area of the underworld, meant for people who did many good things in life. It is the best possible afterlife one can achieve.”

Molly turned back to the shades. “Wow. Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying the show!” A _thank you_ echoed around the gathered crowd. Then, in ones and twos, the shades began to drift away. Molly turned back to Caleb and paused. “Are you all right?”

Caleb looked pretty bad. He seemed paler than usual, almost grayish, and there were faint circles under his eyes. His hair looked as if he’d been running his fingers through it, over and over and over. “I am fine. Just… bad dreams, I suppose.” He scratched at his arm. Frumpkin slipped away through the grass and reappeared a second later when he stood on his hind legs and put his front paws on Caleb’s leg. Caleb picked him up and let the cat curl over his shoulders like a mantle.

“Oh,” said Molly. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that.”

Caleb looked away. “I should get back to work. I just wanted to come check on you.”

“Should _I_ be checking on _you?_ ”

“You do not have to.” Caleb turned to go.

“Hey.” Molly grabbed his wrist and almost recoiled—even through the sleeve, he was cold as ice. Caleb halted, his muscles tense. Molly stepped around him so he could see his face. “Why do you bother sleeping if the nightmares are really that bad?”

“I have told you, Mollymauk, I have to sleep.”

“I’ve never met a god who has to sleep. What are you actually doing in there?”

“I am sleeping.”

“Bullshit.”

“It is the truth.” Caleb was looking away again, like he’d rather be anywhere but here, but he wasn’t making any attempts to get away. He didn’t even tug at Molly’s grip on his arm. That seemed so weird and so, so wrong. He looked guilty. Why the hell did he look guilty?

Molly knew he shouldn’t push it. He heaved a sigh. “Fine,” he said, releasing his grip on Caleb’s arm. “Don’t tell me, then.”

Caleb wordlessly stepped around him and headed across the field, back towards his cottage. Molly waited for him to get a decent head start before he followed. Something had changed between yesterday and today. It didn’t take a lot of imagination to guess what. Yesterday morning, he’d been awake and researching when Molly found him. It followed that he’d gotten up and started research again today, before he came to find Molly. What had he found in that time?

Molly trotted up to walk next to him. “So, what did you find today?”

Caleb glanced at him, his eyebrows raised. He seemed to relax a little. “Ah, nothing, I am afraid. I have not returned to the library yet this morning.”

“Did you figure something new out, then?” Molly watched him closely for any new signs of guilt.

“No.” Caleb sagged a little. Then his brow furrowed, and he gave Molly a puzzled look. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re acting like something’s different, so I thought something must be different.”

“Ah. I see.” Caleb looked down again. “No, nothing is different. I will… get back to work. I can’t imagine you want to spend any more time here than you have to.”

The rest of the walk back to the house was silent. Molly turned this over in his head. Okay, so that had sounded like pretty genuine disappointment with himself. But he was hiding _something._ Molly knew Caleb had secrets, but he’d never acted like this about them. They were his own business, and he seemed to know that. So this _had_ to be over something to do with Molly. Otherwise, why would he be guilty about hiding it?

Molly sat around all day thinking. Thinking wasn’t his strongest suit, but that was just because he was so good at other things. It was his weakest strong suit. He climbed the tree and thought about eating a pomegranate, and decided against it. It was a good thing he’d eaten that thing here, instead of taking three and going back to Jester and Yasha and Beau and everyone. Would it still have trapped him if he’d eaten it out there? Probably. He suppressed a shudder. He could’ve accidentally trapped _Jester_ down here. Caleb said the binding had happened because he’d eaten the fruit. It probably didn’t matter _where_ he ate it. In a house, with a mouse…

He looked up at the ceiling, and an image pushed to the forefront of his mind. Darkness pressing against his face, his hands. Clawing upwards through ground above him but still finding only black earth. For a few seconds, an eternity, he’d thought he would just keep digging forever and never reach the surface.

This wasn’t a ceiling he could dig through, anyway. Couldn't even reach it. But at least he had air, and company.

 _Company._ Maybe there was another way to get Caleb to tell him what he’d learned. If he wasn’t willing to say anything out of guilt or friendship (were they friends? Molly might have said so, but then, maybe Caleb would disagree) then there was another pretty common form of persuasion that Molly could try. People were willing to say a lot of things when they were more relaxed. And, hey, Caleb was decently good-looking. Molly had never been the type to pretend he didn’t want something when he did. Two birds with one stone. More than two birds, maybe.

Molly slid out of the tree and went inside. Caleb wasn’t in the main room, though there was a fire going. He headed for the library and poked his head in. The torches and chandeliers were lit. When he peered down from the balcony, he spotted Caleb at the tables again. He was sitting, his elbow resting on the table and his forehead in his hand. Was he asleep? No, his eyes were open. He was just staring at the table. He didn’t seem to have noticed Molly yet.

Quietly, Molly grinned and headed for the staircase behind Caleb. He stepped carefully, testing each stair before he put his weight on it. Caleb’s head stayed down. He didn’t seem to have noticed Molly, not even when Molly ghosted between the bookshelves and paused just a few feet behind him.

Molly slowed to a stop and studied him, trying to decide what to do. He could sneak up and scare him, but something told him that Caleb didn’t like to be surprised. At least, not like that. Hm. Could just tap him on the shoulder, but that was boring. What to do?

As he thought, Molly started to pick out details on Caleb's form. He’d never had this much time to look at the lord of the dead without him noticing. His reddish hair, half tied up, spilled over the back of his collar in a couple of places. That really was an old coat; Molly could see wear on the collar from here, and the elbows, too. Maybe, while he was down here, Molly could make him a new one. Not one as nice as his own, but anything would be better than that old thing, wouldn’t it?

He did remember some of the pattern from his old coat. Caleb looked a little smaller than Molly, but he could make adjustments easily enough. Come to think of it, Caleb was shorter, too, wasn’t he? And there would have to be long sleeves on it, ugh. Attaching sleeves was the worst part of everything. But maybe Caleb would let him do a little embroidery. Something on the back, maybe. Flames licking up the coattails, since Caleb seemed so enamored with the fireplace. That might add a little color to his wardrobe.

The shoulders would have to come in, though, and the sleeves. Caleb’s shoulders seemed narrower than Molly’s. But maybe that was just because he always held himself like he was trying to look smaller. Hell, maybe he wasn’t that short, either.

Molly crossed his arms, leaned sideways against the bookshelf, and heaved a sigh. Instantly he realized his mistake, but it was too late. Caleb sat up and turned in his chair. “Mollymauk,” he said, like he wasn’t surprised at all. “I did not see you there.”

“Yeah, I wanted to see how close I could get.” Molly trotted over and leaned against the table in front of him, just a little closer than he normally would. Just close enough that he figured Caleb would notice. “What were you doing?”

“Just… thinking.” Caleb shuffled through his books, pointedly not looking at Mollymauk. Was his face a little red? Molly flicked his tail, delighted. Caleb’s gaze caught on the motion, but he quickly looked down again.

“What about?” Molly inquired conversationally.

“Ah… nothing.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

Caleb glanced up. Was that the guilt again, or shyness? Both those options worked. Molly turned this over in his head while Caleb, oblivious to Molly’s calculations, cleared his throat. “I… suppose so. I should have said, nothing new. I am still thinking how to find you a way out. You are not meant for this place, and this place is not meant for you.”

There. That would work. “Well…” Molly sidled a little closer. Caleb’s eyes fixed on him, but he said nothing as Molly leaned down closer to his face and smiled. “It’s not _all_ bad down here.”

“Ah.” Caleb’s ears were red. He couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from Molly’s face, though. His eyes were very blue. Molly hadn’t paid much attention to them before, but they looked even bluer now that he was blushing. “Um. P—uh, perhaps I should—I should get back to, to my research.”

“Oh, come _on._ ” Molly smoothly settled into his lap and propped one arm on his shoulder. “Can’t you take a break? Have some fun? Hasn’t it been a while?”

Caleb cleared his throat and tried to speak, and Molly gave him his most seductive smile and twined his arms together behind Caleb’s neck.

For another moment, it seemed like this was going to work. Caleb tried to speak a couple of times, his gaze flicking down, and then up, and then down, and then up again, still focused on Molly. Molly thought about pushing a little more, but no, he didn’t want to scare him off.

Then a different expression dropped over Caleb’s face—something cold and heavy. he looked away. He opened his mouth, paused, and the closed it and swallowed. Molly stayed right where he was, waiting. He had a feeling where this was going, but he’d never been one to give up before it was over.

At last, Caleb took a deep breath and spoke. “I will repeat that I am not keeping you here.” He put his hands very carefully on either side of Molly’s ribcage and pushed him gently backwards. The touch seemed to burn. Like Caleb was running hot instead of cold, this time. “This is my realm, but some things are beyond me. You ate the fruit, Mollymauk, and you are of the dead.”

Damn. “That’s not what this is about,” Molly lied. Half-lied? It wasn’t _completely_ about getting information. He dropped his voice to a purr and dragged his fingernails up the side of Caleb’s neck, trying to scramble his advantage back together. “Is it so hard to believe I’m just interested in you?”

Goosebumps prickled over Caleb’s skin, and a flush crept up from his collar, but Caleb was unmoved. He took another deep breath and fixed his gaze squarely on Molly's. Molly blinked with the sudden realization that Caleb had never actually met his eyes before. “Mollymauk, please get off of me. What you are doing is not kind.”

Molly hesitated, and then silently climbed off and stepped back. Caleb got to his feet and headed for the stairs without another word, without even looking at him again.

“Wait,” Molly began, suddenly afraid of being alone. But Caleb had already reached the balcony and disappeared through the door. Molly leaped to his feet and ran after him, reaching the hallway just in time to see the door to Caleb’s room swing shut. The lock clicked.

Molly stood there a minute, staring down the empty hallway. “Damn it,” he said out loud. When he looked around, Frumpkin was nowhere to be seen. Probably in there with Caleb, or out in the fields chasing ghost mice, or something. He was well and truly alone, this time.

“Damn it.” Molly went to the front room and dropped onto his back on the floor. He didn’t move from there for a long time. “ _Damn_ it,” he said again to the ceiling. The memory of that change in Caleb’s expression pushed to the front of his mind and stuck there. Now that he had time to think about it, Molly could read that expression. Embarrassment, mostly. Betrayal. Disappointment. Was he disappointed in himself? Or in Molly? Or in the situation?

For a second Molly thought to be mad—how could he just assume that he was only in it for information?—but the thought quickly died. It was hypocritical. He _had_ been in it to find out what Caleb was hiding. He had no right to be angry at Caleb for accusing him of something he was actually doing. In fact, he couldn’t be upset with anyone but himself. He was all alone now. The only other person he could possibly talk to was the person upset with him. There was no Beau to call him an idiot, to say what he was thinking out loud. No Jester to assure him it was fine, just be nice to Caleb and he’d soften up again. No Yasha to sit and watch him pace and let him yell at himself until he wound down. He couldn’t even ask Marion or Caduceus for advice. Or Fjord. Sometimes he asked Fjord for advice. Sometimes it was good advice, and sometimes it gave him an opportunity to hear a suggestion even dumber than his own ideas. It was coin-flip, with that man. Sometimes he and Fjord were more alike than he would readily admit.

Molly missed them. He missed the valley. He missed being able to move on to another town if he made a mistake and offended someone. Chances were, whoever had been upset with him would have died of old age before he ever returned. But there was no way to avoid Caleb, was there? He didn’t have anywhere to go.

Or. _Or,_ maybe there was. The City of the Blessed sounded like a good place to stay for a while. Who knew there were happy people in the underworld? Caleb should have told him about it sooner.

This was a good plan. He’d go hang out in the City of the Blessed for a while and check back in later, once this had blown over.

Molly hopped to his feet and thought about telling Caleb where he was going. But no, he probably didn’t want to hear Molly’s voice right now. So, Molly headed out the door, picked a direction, and started walking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're on that "god damn it just admit you feel bad and apologize" train today


	9. Chapter 9

It wasn’t as difficult to find the City of the Blessed as Molly had feared. He asked a few of the shades for directions, and eventually he found one who was a little clearer than most. The woman pointed him in some direction, and the thanked her and went on his way.

After a little while—maybe a couple of hours—Molly was starting to think that she’d been either mistaken or messing with him. All the fields looked the same, just endless yellow grass and the occasional drifting spirits, in clumps or alone. But eventually he realized that, if he looked hard enough, he could see a faint glow on the horizon. He broke into a trot, wading through grass that came halfway up his thighs. And soon, something solid came into view. Something solid, and white, and glowing like the sun.

He had to squint, but as he got closer, his eyes adjusted and he realized that the wall—because it _was_ a wall—wasn’t glowing as bright as he’d thought. It was just that everything else was so dim, and he’d gotten used to the middling darkness and flickering candlelight in Caleb’s house.

The thought brought Caleb to mind again. When he came out of that room, he’d find the house and the surrounding fields empty. He might think Mollymauk had gone to try and get to the surface. Would he be worried? Or would he just huff a “Good riddance” and bury himself in his books again?

Molly shook his head and picked up his pace, as if he could outrun the thought.

As he drew closer, though, he noticed something else. Dimmer shapes, clustered against the walls. And when he finally managed to make out what they were, he slowed to a stop.

Shades. All those shapes were people, spirits, pressed up against the walls that towered hundreds of feet over them. Some seemed as if they were trying to climb, but their fingers slid uselessly against the smooth white stone. Others simply leaned against the walls, not speaking, not trying to get in. None of them were trying to clamber over each other, and nobody was trying to make them leave—which was cold comfort—but the sight of it still made Molly feel sick. Strangely, none of them seemed to be trying to get through the one gate he could see—an arched dooway—that stood inexplicably open. It was like none of them could see it.

Though he suddenly didn’t want to, he headed for the wall. “Excuse me,” he called out as he got close. None of the shades acknowledged him. Now that he looked around, there were no shades drifting around here. As if all the spirits in sight had been drawn to the wall like iron filings to a magnet. Or maybe the other shades just avoided this place?

“Excuse me,” he said again. “What are you doing?”

One of the shades turned to face him. Their face was impossible to make out. _City of the Blessed,_ it said, its voice distantly frantic. _In. Need. Wall. Wall in the way. Why?_

“There’s a gate right over there,” Molly told them, pointing.

The spirit looked. Then, without speaking, it turned and began clawing at the wall again.

Molly tried talking to a few other shades, but they all said more or less the same thing. They wanted in. They couldn’t see the gate. He even tried leading one or two of them over to it, but when he let go, they just drifted away.

He stood there for a second. He looked through the doorway. There were buildings inside. Cobblestone streets. And shades. So many shades, all bustling around, going about their business, it looked like. None of them coming in or out, just passing by.

He looked back at the shades, leaning against the walls, hopeless.

Later, he decided. He would… he would deal with that later. Nothing he could do right now. He turned without looking at them again and stepped through the gateway.

Instantly, the air around him changed. He’d never noticed how dry the air was in the fields, but he stepped into a warm sort of humidity that he’d never really thought to appreciate before. And it was bright here. He tilted his head back and squinted, shading his eyes. But instead of the darkened ceiling, he found a familiar blue sky, and even a sun, visible overhead, casting shadows like… well, like the sun.

The sound was what he noticed next. He hadn’t been able to hear the city from outside, but now that he was through the walls, the noise of it was all around him. People talking, people _laughing,_ carts bumping down the street, the distant shouts of hawkers. The shades wove around him, not speaking to him, but—but _looking_ at him, noticing he was there and steering around him like they did for everyone else.

For a second he just stood there, staring up at the sky, feeling the warmth from the sun. It was a fake sun, but what did he care? A sky was a sky, and he hadn’t seen one in so long.

People seemed to divide the road in half, depending on which way they were going. He picked a side and followed the flow. He passed people eating food on patios, a small group of children kicking a ball around a courtyard, street vendors selling fruit and baked goods and cold drinks. Molly stopped at one with flaky-looking pastries and pointed to one with strawberries. “How much?”

The man laughed. “You must be new here! Just take it!”

Molly thanked him, took the pastry, and ate as he walked, his tail swishing happily. He didn’t think he’d ever had anything that tasted this good. It was just the perfect combination of sweetness and tartness from the fruit, not too gooey, not to dry, warm and faintly dusted with sugar.

“My lord!” called one of the hawkers, a woman. The inside and outside of her open-front red tent were both lined with the most gorgeous tapestries Molly had ever seen. He saw depictions of dragons and people and plants and fairies, all picked out in jewel tones and earth tones, surrounded by intricate woven borders and panels. Smaller pieces were stacked on tables, or laid out on chairs for display.

Molly ducked into her tent, delighted. It was a little warmer inside, but not unpleasantly so. “Madam, these are _gorgeous!_ ” he told her.

The woman sketched a bow. “You honor me! Since I have come here, I’ve had all the time I needed to perfect my art.” She ran a hand down one of her works. “I saw you and thought I may have found a kindred spirit!”

“You have!”

She gestured to him. “May I take a closer look?”

“Of course!” Molly shrugged out of his coat and handed it over. She took the coat and marveled over his creativity, his choice in colors, but, “I believe your stitching could use some work, my lord.”

He laughed. “I’d agree!”

“Well, if you wish to learn, I’m often here!” She handed the coat back. “All in all, it is fine work! What is your name?”

“Mollymauk,” he told her.

Her eyes widened. “Mollymauk? You’re _Mollymauk?_ Truly?”

“In the flesh!”

“Oh, my gods.” She’d gone pale, but her eyes were sparkling. “I—thank you for visiting! I—you honor me! What—how did you come to be in the City of the Blessed?”

“Visiting!” Molly told her. “I heard about this place and thought I’d stop by.”

By this point, a few more of the shades must have heard them talking. They drifted into the tent to listen, and Molly could hear them murmuring to each other—“Mollymauk? The god of revelry? Mollymauk is here?” They were starting to hold up traffic, which drew _more_ attention. Molly could already feel the energy of all these people building around him. Curiosity, delight, joy. They were happy to see him. They were happy, _period._

He turned around and found himself, naturally, the center of attention. “Hello!” he told them. A few of them skittered, startled, but the rest didn’t seem so shy. He got the weaver’s name—Sinoe—and managed to thank her before the crowd drew him out of the tent and down the road. He felt sort of like he’d been caught up in a flood, but he was plenty happy to let them wash him away for now.

Word gradually spread about him, and soon enough, he found himself in the center of everything. For the first few hours shades followed after him like his own personal parade. People offered him food and drinks and showed him around the city. There were verdant parks, and huge houses, and _so_ many places to eat. Around dusk he was swept into a huge amphitheater, and he was offered a seat close to the front. At one point one of the actors—playing a rowdy, happy drunk—came off of the stage and asked him to dance during a party scene. Molly accepted his hand, and the two of them romped around the stage while the audience and Mollymauk laughed. Eventually he was spun back to his seat, and he and the actor bowed playfully to each other. Molly dropped back onto the bench, still laughing.

It was dark after that, and he joined the crowds again. Most of the buildings had oil lamps out front, and people carried lanterns of their own. Molly didn’t bother with one; there was plenty of light to see by. He stopped by a bathhouse and soaked in the water for a while, letting himself melt in the sheer bliss of it. He hadn’t had a bath like this in far too long The people in here were a little calmer, a little less loud. They told him their names, what they did here. There were a lot of artists. Everyone had time to do anything. He met a woman who painted flowery designs on buildings, and a man who had designed several bridges, and people who made pottery and food and music.

When he’d been there long enough that he could hardly tell where he ended and the water began, he climbed out and found a square where people were dancing to drums. He stood and clapped along, joining in the songs when he knew them. It was just like the best festivals in the mortal world.

Then, through the crowd, he caught a glimpse of reddish hair. He paused and looked, craning his neck. Was there a cat somewhere in the tangle of people’s legs? A dark coat?

Then the person with red hair turned their head, and Molly saw that he was thin-featured, with bright eyes, and he was laughing and dancing with a dark-haired woman. He wasn’t Caleb.

For the first time in hours, Molly felt something cold settle in his chest. Caleb _had_ to have noticed he was gone by now. Had he gone looking? There was no real reason for him to go looking, was there? Molly had just been taking up space. Breaking the peace. Caleb was an old lump, anyway. He was probably glad Molly was gone, and Molly was glad he was gone, too. This place was much more suited to him.

“My lord?” someone asked.

Molly realized he’d stopped clapping. “Yes?” he asked the stranger.

“I was just wondering…” The woman hesitated, almost shy but not quite. “Do you have a place to sleep tonight?”

Molly almost told her that he didn’t need to sleep. But he gave the woman a once-over and got a little bit more of an idea of why she was asking. What better way to stop thinking about someone, than to start thinking about someone else? He grinned. “Why, are you offering an invitation?”

She smiled, her eyes hooded. Molly let her take his arm and lead him off through the crowd.

Needless to say, it was the best night he’d had in a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this all in like the last half hour so I may be coming back and making minor changes to wording


	10. Jester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> having some Jester feelings here

Jester was restless. She tried reading, tried playing some pranks, tried going to Beau and Yasha and Fjord and everyone to see if they were doing anything interesting. Beau was fun for a little bit, but Yasha was even quieter than usual, and not in that introspective way that she got sometimes. She seemed to be troubled, but when Jester asked her what was up, she just shook her head and said, “I don’t know.” So Jester gave up and drew in her sketchbook and tried talking to the Traveler for a while. He was fun, but he seemed distracted and he couldn’t stay for too long. That just made her feel worse.

One night, her mama asked her if she was all right.

“I’m good!” Jester told her. “I’m real good. How was _your_ day?”

Marion gave her a motherly look that was a combination of love, disappointment, and exasperation.

Jester heaved a sigh. She moved her food around on her place with one finger. “I dunno. I’m just real bored lately.”

“Is Molly out of ideas, too?” Marion asked.

“No, he’s just away doing something. I think he was going to the mortal world, and he isn’t back yet.”

Her mother pursed her lips. She’d always been nervous about the idea of Jester going to the mortal world. Her worry was the reason Jester never went too far from the Valley of the Gods. She knew she _could_ go, but she didn’t want to worry her mama like that.

Neither of them spoke for a minute. “So,” Marion said, with a tone that told Jester she was changing the topic. “I’m singing next week. Do you want to come and watch?”

A few days later Jester was walking along the street, kicking a rock as she went. She’d already kicked the rock a block and a half, and even that was starting to lose the little bit of entertainment it had given her. She was completely out of ideas. Nothing new to draw, nothing new to do. She felt like a carriage wheel spinning in mud, treading the same ground, trying the same things over and over despite none of it actually helping her. _Am I the problem?_ She’d wondered. _Am I just not fun anymore?_ That could explain it. That could explain why Molly had left without asking if she wanted to go to. That could be why the Traveler didn’t have time for her anymore…

She stopped walking and scrubbed at her eye. Then, out of the corner of her vision, she spotted a familiar dark shape. Yasha, sitting just off the road with her back against a tree, staring pensively off into space.

“Yasha?” Jester asked. But Yasha didn’t react. Jester stepped a little closer. “Hey, Yasha, what are you doing?”

Startled out of her thoughts, Yasha looked at her and blinked. And hesitantly smiled. “Oh. Hello, Jester. I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“Yeah, you were thinking really hard.” Jester trotted over and dropped down next to her. “What were you thinking about?”

“I don’t know, exactly,” Yasha admitted. Her brow furrowed, and she blinked, and blinked again. “Something just feels wrong, and I’m trying to figure out what it is.”

“Wrong?” Jester asked, though she felt a creeping chill in the back of her mind. Something was wrong. She wasn’t bored because she was getting boring. Something was _wrong._ “Wrong how?”

“I’m not sure. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Beau mentioned feeling something, too. I’m trying to think of what could be affecting both our realms like this.” She paused to think. Jester was used to her pausing like this. “I thought maybe there was some sort of new war machine, or a plague or a poison, or something, but there isn’t. And all of our temples seem just fine. I don’t really know what else is up.”

Jester sat next to her in silence for a minute. Should she mention that she’d been feeling weird, too? No, thinking about it, there was no way that what was going on with her was related to whatever was happening with Yasha and Beau. Knowledge and truth, and grief and war, and… joy? Mischief? What could possibly be so wrong that it was affecting _all_ of those things? But still…

“Have you noticed something, too?” Yasha asked, ruining Jester’s internal debate.

She shifted uneasily and fiddled with a loose thread in her skirt. “I mean… I guess, yeah. Maybe? I thought it was just me, you know, maybe I was just, like, tired or something. But I guess it could be.”

Yasha’s brow furrowed. “That’s strange. What could possibly be affecting all three of us?”

“Have you talked to Molly?” Jester asked.

Yasha shook her head. “No, I haven’t gone looking for him. Although… I wonder if he knows anything about what’s going on.” She looked thoughtful. This wouldn’t be the first time Molly had screwed something up in the mortal world. He didn’t do it on _purpose,_ but he had a habit of trying to just fix everything himself before anyone else noticed. He didn’t ask for help a whole lot, not until he was totally sure he couldn’t possibly patch things up by himself. A lot of times, when they found him, he was in even deeper trouble than he’d started in.

“Maybe I should go find him.” Yasha got to her feet. “He’s been there for a little while, so he might have noticed something we didn’t.”

“Yeah.” Jester got to her feet, too. Even standing up, she was still a whole head shorter than Yasha. “Are you taking anything with you?” She sort of hoped Yasha would ask her to come. Molly, wherever they found him, was bound to be right in the middle of something fun. Or at least something interesting. He seemed like he always was, in all those stories he told her about things that happened in the mortal world. She wanted to _be_ in one of those stories.

But Yasha shook her head. “No, I’m all right. I should go ahead and leave. The sooner I find him, the better.”

Jester crushed down her disappointment in her chest. “All right! I’ll let people know you left, then!”

Yasha smiled at her. “Thank you, Jester.”

“No problem!”

They walked together to the edge of the city, and a little farther, At the top of one of the hills overlooking the valley, Yasha finally said goodbye to Jester. For a while Jester stayed there at the top of the hill, waving after Yasha and calling out encouragement. Even for another minute after Yasha was out of sight.

Finally, slowly, she stopped shouting and let her hand drop. The wind whistled over the top of the hill, blowing her skirt out in front of her. She turned back to look at the Valley of the Gods. It looked so small from up here.

With a heavy sigh, Jester started back down the hill towards home.


	11. Chapter 11

Molly woke to late-morning sunlight streaming through the window. He stretched and yawned. The room around him was full of people who were also asleep or in varying states of waking up. Normally Molly would have expected them all to have horrible hangovers, but nobody seemed to get hangovers here. They just got up and went right on partying.

But now, before everyone else woke up, he had a few moments to himself. He disentangled himself from a couple of people and picked his way over the sleeping forms. Someone groggily asked, “My lord?” and Molly put a finger to his lips. The man copied the gesture and nodded in that solemn way that drunks did.

Outside, there were already people in the streets. Of course. Early risers. He slipped into the steady stream of people and made his way towards the street where he’d met Sinoe. On the way, he snagged a small meat pastry from one cart and a strawberry tart from another. He alternated bites of both as he walked.

By this point, nearly everyone seemed to recognize him. They called greetings that he did his best to respond to, though it was mostly waving because he was doing his best to keep his mouth full and look like he was in a hurry. He adored the people here, he really did, but none of them seemed to have a sense of taking up time. Which made sense, he supposed; they were here forever, or as long as they wanted to be. It wasn’t as if _they_ had any reason to rush. Time, he was beginning to realize, was quite cheap when you had as much of it as you wanted. One of these people could spend a whole day staring at a tree, and it wouldn’t matter any more than if they’d only looked for a few seconds.

There were no clocks here. No way to tell time. Molly could have been here for a month or a year and he figured he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. How long had he been gone? Not a year, he was sure of that. Not even a month. A week? Two weeks? Each day here bled into the next, a cycle of waking up and sleeping and waking up and sleeping. He had no way to keep track of time.

How long had he been gone? From Caleb’s house, and more importantly, from the surface? Had anyone gotten worried yet? Would they be able to track him down here? Maybe they’d have some ideas of what to do.

Exhausted already, Molly dropped onto one of the benches, threw his head back, and heaved a sigh. The sky above him was perfect and blue, with some clouds but not too many. He kind of wished it would rain. The whole time he’d been here, there hadn’t been a single rainy day. But they were underground. Of course it didn’t rain. Then again, there shouldn’t be a sky here at all. Much less a perfectly pretty blue one.

A shadow flitted over him. He squinted. There was a _bird_ up there.

Instantly he thought of the falcon that brought him gifts. He sprang to his feet and shaded his eyes, but it was too far away to see very well. He looked around. There was no way to get onto the roofs from here. But most of these buildings had balconies, or something.

He raced into the nearest building and asked the first person he saw, “Hey, can I use your balcony?”

She blinked. “This—this isn’t my house, but I don’t see why n—”

“Thanks! You’re a doll.” He dashed past her and up the stairs and out onto the balcony, where he hit the railing so hard he nearly toppled over. A frantic scan of the sky told him that the bird was still up there. Circling, maybe. Was it looking for him? How had it possibly found him down here?

He had to get higher. He climbed onto the railing, wobbled, and grabbed the edge of the roof. It took him a couple of tries to haul himself up onto the tiles, and there, he stood up and looked around again. The bird was still there, a black shape against the blue. His heart leaped. He whistled, trying to draw the bird’s attention. He wished he could fly. He didn’t know any gods who could fly, but he imagined there had to be a few, at least. Why wasn’t he one of them?

The bird continued to circle. He whistled again. But either it couldn’t hear him, or it was ignoring him. He tried whistling a third time, and when that didn’t work, he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. Someone poked their head out of a nearby window, and when they spotted Mollymauk, their disgruntled expression morphed into one of confusion. “My lord? Do you need something?”

He glanced down at them. “Nothing, thanks for asking!”

When he looked up again, the bird had disappeared.

He turned in a circle, looking for it, but the sky was empty. How had it vanished that fast? And why hadn’t it spotted him? He’d been standing on a damn roof. It had spotted him in forests and other cities before. It had to have seen him. But if it _had_ seen him, then that meant it was ignoring him.

A thousand worries boiled up in his mind. Before he made the mistake of focusing on any of them too clearly, he grabbed the roof and swung down onto the balcony. But he hadn’t pulled his legs in enough as he swung, and he banged his knee on the railing and toppled over onto the stones. And he stayed there. He didn’t want to get up.

“My lord?” Someone appeared over him. There really were people everywhere in this city. Never mind that he was in someone else’s house. “My lord Mollymauk, are you all right?”

"I’m fine,” he said with cheer he didn’t feel. “Mind if I stay here for a bit?”

“Um. Of course not. Do you require anything?”

“Nope, I’m good.”

"Are you sure? I have, I have food, or water. Or pillows, at least?”

“Nope.” Telling the shade, _Just leave me here,_ would probably only make them more worried. He gave an exaggerated grin. The shade looked unconvinced, but at least they left.

It was only a few minutes before his back started to hurt, and he pushed himself upright and escaped down into the street. There were more people out now, waving and saying hello to him. He passed Sinoe’s stall without looking inside. She called, “My lord?” after him but he only managed a vague wave. The marketplace was crowded. He slipped around the edges, past people showing off art and food, skirting around a small group of people sitting in a green space.

"Mollymauk! My lord!” One of the shades waved him over.

He put on a smile and waved back. “I’ll be there in a little bit!”

It took him another hour of wandering to realize that he was looking for someplace quiet. But even then, he couldn’t find one. Everywhere he turned, there was music and laughter and shouting and people, and they were swimming and drinking and talking and it was all just blurring into noise. Molly waved off alcohol and food and the hands sliding along his sleeves. He resisted the urge to take the coat off and ball it up, to clutch it to his chest so nobody could grab onto it. They didn’t mean any harm, he knew they didn’t mean any harm. Nothing had changed, he was the only one acting different. Why was it too much all of a sudden?

Finally, after a series of random twists and turns that he took just trying to get _away,_ he squeezed between two buildings and stumbled out into a small courtyard. A small, empty courtyard, enclosed on all sides by windowless walls. There was a raised fountain against the opposite wall, with a stone fish spitting water into a pool and willow trees on either side. Judging by the scattered leaves and the grass pushing up through the cobblestones, this place wasn’t as popular as other places in the city. The noise from the streets was distant and easy to ignore.

“Finally.” Molly took off his coat and sat sideways on the ledge to splash some water on his face. The sound of the water reminded him a little bit of Caduceus’s sanctuary, out in the mountains. A nature sound. It occurred to him that he hadn’t seen any rivers or creeks in the underworld. Just the aqueducts and fountains and bathhouses here in the city.

For a little while, he just sat leaning on his hand and looked down into the water. He didn’t move, didn’t speak. It had been a while since he got to sit quietly with Yasha or Caduceus or Beau—he’d forgotten how good it was to just… be. He even missed when Fjord joined them and spent the whole time fidgeting.

After a little while, he got tired of staring at his reflection and he sat up to look around the courtyard. There were a lot of little things to notice. Those were always his favorite parts of detailed tapestries; the things you noticed if you sat and looked at them hard. Scales on the stone fish. The rough stone texture of the lip of the fountain. Small, pink flowers scattered in with the grass. That made him think of Yasha. His mood sank again.

He missed Yasha. And Jester. Beau. Fjord. Nott. Partying with a whole city of strangers didn’t hold a candle to a night spent drinking and playing games in someone’s home back in the Valley of the Gods. He was _lonely,_ dammit. Even Frumpkin would do right now. Hell, even _Caleb_ would do right now. Just as long as he wasn’t alone.

Mollymauk was so deeply focused on the silence that he didn’t notice the intruder until they cleared their throat. Too tired to jump, Molly looked up and found Caleb standing awkwardly near the entrance to the courtyard.

“Mr. Caleb,” he said by way of greeting.

Caleb nodded.

Neither of them spoke for a minute. Caleb seemed to be waiting for something, but Mollymauk didn’t have anything to say. He looked down into the water. Then up at the blue sky. Just not at Caleb. “Well?” he said finally. “What is it?”

“Ah.” Caleb hesitated. “I… was looking for you.”

“Yeah? And how did you possibly find me in all this?”

“… I am not sure you will like the answer.”

Molly narrowed his eyes. “What the hell are you talking about? Were you following me, or something?”

Caleb slowly shook his head. When Molly just continued to glare at him, he looked down. “I felt sorrow from somewhere inside the city,” he admitted. “There is not supposed to be any, here. I thought it must be you. I wanted to… check on you.”

“Did you know I was here the whole time?”

“Yes,” Caleb told him. “A god in the city of the blessed is… big news. Especially a god like you.” He paused. “If it helps, the shades enjoy having you here.”

Molly grunted and looked down at his reflection in the water again.

They stood in silence or a while. Caleb said nothing.

Finally, Molly glanced at him. “I guess I should apologize.”

Caleb didn’t respond right away. He lifted one hand to fiddle with the end of his scarf. He still hadn’t met Molly’s eyes. “I am not here to pass judgement on you,” he said at last. “You can feel free to stay here as long as you like. I had thought that this place might be mor comfortable for you. It was only my own selfishness that kept me from suggesting that you… relocate.”

Molly wished he had. He wished he’d come here under different circumstances. Maybe he would’ve been able to stay here longer if he hadn’t had the weight of that guilt on his back. Or maybe he would have left sooner if he’d thought he had somewhere to go back to. “The city’s nice,” was all he said out loud. “But it gets a little wearing after a while, y’know?”

Caleb made a low noise of acknowledgement.

They were silent for a moment. Molly took a deep breath. “Have you found anything new?”

“I have not.”

“Are you telling the truth?”

The exhaustion in Caleb’s eyes made him look so, so old. “What reason do I have to lie to you?”

 _Because you’re sad and lonely and you don’t want me to leave,_ Molly didn’t say out loud. Even if it was true, Caleb hadn’t said as much. It would be more than a little cruel to throw it in his face. And Molly didn’t feel like being cruel right now. Especially not to this man. He’d been cruel enough to him already.

“I’ve got to ask,” he said instead. “If you knew where I was the whole time, why…” He paused. _Why didn’t you come look for me_ was a stupid question. He was the one who’d wronged Caleb. And it wasn’t really looking for someone if you knew where they were. But he felt stupid, now, for having thought that Caleb might have been worried.

Caleb scratched his arm. “I thought you would prefer space,” he said to the ground. “I sent Frumpkin to check on you every few days, at first. But you seemed to be settling in well, so I stopped. There seemed to be no point in contacting you unless I had made progress. Seemed better to just let you stay somewhere you enjoyed.”

Molly heaved a sigh. And for a minute, they just sat there. Molly wanted to ask if he could come back to Caleb’s house, but that seemed presumptuous, and… clingy? If that was the right word for it? Childish, maybe? He wrestled with his pride for a second before he remembered that he prided himself on not really bothering to wrestle with his pride. He’d happily made a fool of himself many times before. There was no reason to hesitate now.

Still, it took him a second. “…Could I possibly come back to live with you?”

“Ja, if that is what you want.” Caleb paused. “I was trying to think of a respectful way to ask whether you wanted to do just that.”

That made Molly laugh. It was dry and cold and it made his throat hurt.

“All right, then.” He pushed himself to his feet and paused when a thought occurred to him. “Will I be able to come back here?”

“I don’t see why not,” Caleb replied. “If the gates are open to you, then they are open to you for good.”

“All right. Let me say goodbye to a couple of people, and then I can go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> these chapters are gonna have to slow down for a while because I am currently writing two campaigns and a podcast in addition to this and other personal projects, because I’m a triple threat (gay, stupid, full of hubris)


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm bringing tarot into this because it's fun

Once he’d said his goodbyes and offered assurances that he would be back, Molly started to head for the gate. Halfway there, though, Caleb turned off into an alley. “This way,” he said. “We do not have to walk through the gates.”

“Really?” Molly trotted up next to him.

“Yes. One of the doors in my home leads to the city. I…” He hesitated. “I avoid using the gate.”

“Because of all the shades outside?”

Caleb shut his eyes briefly, but otherwise didn’t respond.

“That reminds me—what’s with all the shades at the walls? That’s… I mean, it seems cruel to just leave them there.”

“I do not decide who goes where,” Caleb said. “Nor do I know how it is decided. Some shades can enter the city; others cannot. Some are drawn straight to the Halls of Punishment.”

“So what happens to the ones outside?”

“They will eventually give up and drift away. Some will choose reincarnation. Others will not, and they will continue to fade until there is nothing left.”

“I can’t imagine why someone would choose that,” Molly told him.

He shrugged listlessly. “Many do not even think to try for another chance. Others do not truly feel that they deserve it.”

There was an odd undertone to his voice there. Not pity, but something else. Molly thought of Caleb’s insistence that he needed to sleep—something only mortals needed. But he wasn’t a mortal. He didn’t give off that same sort of energy, that unseeable something that told Molly that one day this man would die. Molly had learned to associate that feeling with gods, but there was an additional sort of power to them that Caleb didn’t seem to hold. _What are you, if you aren’t like me and you aren’t like them?_

Instead, he asked, “So you don’t even know how they decide who’s worthy and who isn’t?”

“You are correct. I do not know who or what passes judgement.”

“Huh. So, you’re not the ruler of the dead so much as you’re the watcher of the dead. Do you actually do anything here?”

Caleb looked down.

Molly wasn’t used to regretting things he said. He made a habit of not saying or doing anything he would regret. But since coming here, he found he regretted nearly everything he did around Caleb. And he couldn’t figure out whether he was acting different, or Caleb was.

“Doesn’t it get boring?” Molly hazarded, trying to cover his ass.

“I have books, and I have Frumpkin.”

“And me, now,” Molly put in.

Caleb huffed. “And you,” he conceded. “Though, the current goal is still to find you a way out of here, is it not?”

“Yeah,” Molly agreed. “You should come with me, at least for a visit. You seem like you could use some friends. I could introduce you to Jester, and Yasha, and everyone. And Beau.” He had the feeling that Beau and Caleb would get along like a house on fire if they didn’t kill each other first.

But Caleb was shaking is head. “I appreciate the thought, but I cannot leave this place.”

“Not ever?” Molly asked. “How come?”

Caleb shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps it is my own form of judgement.”

“For _what?_ How long have you even been down here? What could you possibly have done to be stuck all alone for so long?”

Maybe it was Molly’s imagination, but Caleb seemed to pick up his pace. A moment later, he rounded a corner. “Ah. We are here.”

The door did, in fact, lead straight into the back hallway of Caleb’s house. Molly had never been so glad to be inside all these four walls again. He hadn’t realized how weirdly bright the City of the Blessed had been—the dim light of the little house was almost comforting.

“So, now what?” Molly asked.

“I will get back to my research, I suppose.”

“Can I help?”

“I… to tell the truth, I am not sure you can. Many of my books are difficult to understand. And my old friend’s notes are in Undercommon. Can you…?”

“Nope,” Molly told him. “I could keep you company, though, at least.”

And so, the days fell into a routine. Molly kept Caleb company. Sometimes he sat with his feet up on the table. Sometimes he shuffled his cards. Once, he closed his eyes and focused on the mystery surrounding Caleb, and he drew three cards—past, present, future. Three of swords. Grief, heartache, some past loss. Molly had figured that much by himself. Caleb carried something with him. The three chairs at the table told enough of the story that he didn’t need to know the rest.

The card for the present was The Hermit, reversed. Isolation and loneliness. Molly glanced up at Caleb across the table, absorbed in copying something out of a notebook. His brow shadowed his eyes. He did not notice Molly watching him.

When Molly drew the the future card, his first thought was that it felt oddly thick. Then he realized he’d accidentally drawn two cards by mistake. The Eight of Swords and… the Sun.

Slowly, Molly laid the two cards on the table. He’d made these cards himself, after he saw humans playing games and telling fortunes with them. It had all seemed like good fun. A game. And it was, mostly, but the more he used the cards, the more eerily accurate they had gotten. He thought maybe it was an effect of being a god—or maybe the cards became what people thought they were.

The eight of swords showed a figure with rope wrapped around their torso, pinning their arms to their sides. Swords lined the background like a cage. And a blindfold covered the figure’s eyes. The card represented someone who was trapped. Self-imprisoned by their own way of thinking. The theory he’d heard was that the figure could escape if they only removed the blindfold and saw the way out, but he’d always had an issue with that interpretation. How was the figure supposed to remove the blindfold? Their arms were tied up. They were all alone. How were they supposed to get out of that?

And the other one… the sun. Molly tilted his head, thinking. There was, of course, the obvious interpretation. The sun. The literal sun. Leaving this place for the surface. Usually, the card represented positivity, warmth, success.

Drawing two cards when he meant to draw one had some interesting implications, though he wasn’t sure what to do with those implications. It was possible that the cards represented two possible outcomes—meaning that Caleb was at a crossroads. Staying or going. The other option was that these would both come to pass, but Molly couldn’t work out how that could possibly be. Trapped, but with all the warmth and positivity of the sun… it didn’t make any sense. What the _hell_ was this?

“What is what?”

Molly jumped. Caleb was looking up at him, his brow furrowed.

“What?” Molly asked.

“You said, ‘what the hell is this,” Caleb told him. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” Molly swept the cards off the table. “Just messing around with my cards. Didn’t mean to say that out loud. Don’t worry about it.”

“Ah. All right.” Caleb turned back to his work.

For a minute, Molly just sat there and studied the top of his head. “I’m going to go make something to eat,” he decided at last. “Do you want any?”

“ _Ja,_ if you do not mind.”

He scraped together some ingredients and got to work. He was in the mood for something with broth, so he ended up starting some stew. He cut up what he could find and seasoned it until it tasted all right. He took a minute to miss Jester’s pastries and the food back in the City of the Blessed. But this was what he had now and it was going to have to do.

While he waited for that to cook, Molly went to take a seat. He almost sat at the table before he remembered the three of swords. Sitting at that table felt too much like he’d be sitting among ghosts. So, he dropped down on the armchair and took out his desk. At random, he drew a card. The Moon. He grinned. That was his favorite card. Tricks, deception; _something is not as it seems._ He consistently drew that card in the mortal world, and he was tickled every time. Like the cards knew what he was, even if the people didn’t.

He went to draw another card, but stopped, thinking of the shades. _No future,_ they’d told him. They were dead. There was nothing left for them. What was he? Molly knew he wasn’t dead. He knew it. He was still alive. He wasn’t trapped down here like the shades. It was different. It was fine. He was fine.

“Damn it,” he said out loud, and then he drew a card.

The card showed a person standing in a small forest of what looked like staves or big sticks. He was holding one, himself. The nine of wands. Courage, resilience, faith.

“You’re telling me to trust him?” he guessed, even though the cards couldn’t talk and he didn’t believe in them, anyway. Not really. They were only as real as he believed they were.

He put the cards away and started to shuffle them, enjoying the weight, the familiar movement. Their edges were soft with use.

It was a little while before he realized Caleb was standing in the doorway. He looked up. “Need something?”

Caleb’s face went blank, but Molly had seen just enough to know that it hadn’t been blank before. It might have been his imagination, but from the corner of his eye, it almost looked as if Caleb had been smiling. Except Caleb didn't really smile so much as he stopped frowning, so it must have been Molly's imagination. “Ah—no. I just came to see if there was anything I could do to help.”

“No, I think it’s about done.” Molly hopped to his feet and checked on the stew.

“It smells done,” Caleb put in, coming over to peer into the pot.

“Yeah, I think so, too. Why don’t you—” Molly lifted his head and stopped. He hadn’t realized that Caleb’s face was so close to his. His eyes were very blue. “Uh.”

Caleb blinked owlishly. A lock of hair slipped down over his face. He looked as startled as Molly was. “Oh,” he said abruptly, and stepped back. “Sorry.”

“Oh, you’re fine.” Molly flashed him a grin, but didn’t go any farther than that. Caleb had made it clear that he wasn’t interested, and Molly was going to respect that. He was not going to make any more moves. He was _not_ going to think about running his hands through Caleb's hair... “Bowls and spoons?”

“I have both, _ja._ ” Caleb retrieved the dishes, and they sat together by the fire—Caleb in a chair, Molly on the floor—and ate in companionable silence.

The eight of swords. Molly found himself chewing on that again. Hands tied, eyes blinded. Exiled and alone. That did sound like Caleb. It seemed like he barely saw past his books because he could hardly stand to look any farther.

And it was then that Molly decided—when he left, Caleb was coming, too. He’d been down here long enough. And maybe it was stupid to worry about getting someone else out when he himself was still trapped, but hey. Maybe he could reach through the swords and loosen the knot.

Maybe they could help each other.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A fist punches out of the ground]  
> I'm alive

_What’s keeping you here?_  
  
“How do you get new books?” Molly asked. He was up on the second floor, drawing books at random in an attempt to find one with pictures. He’d found a few diagrams and magic circles, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of them. His blood magic came from, well… blood. He’d never really needed to think about it; it just happened. Come to think of it, he hadn’t used his blood magic since he came down here. Would it even work? It was so intrinsically tied to life…

“Sorry, what did you say?” Caleb called from his table.

Molly raised his voice. “I asked how you get new books. Do you get new books?”

“Ah. I do not get many, no. Most of them are brought as gifts. Sometimes Veth will keep a lookout for titles I mention to her.”

“When am I gonna get to meet this lady?” Molly pulled a book off a shelf and opened it. It wasn’t even in Common. He shut it and returned it to the shelf.

“I do not know. The sooner she visits, the better. She will be able to carry a message to... the valley of the gods, I suppose.”

“Yeah.” The way he said it caught Molly’s attention. “Have you never been there?”

“No. I have not.” Caleb’s tone of voice made it obvious he didn’t want to talk about it. Molly decided to drop the subject and resigned himself to silence.

Until, thirty second later, he opened and book and let out a bark of laughter.

“What?” Caleb called from downstairs.

Molly stepped out of the shelves to wave the book over the railing. “I didn’t know you were into dirty books, Caleb! I think Jester has this one, too!”

Caleb’s ears went red. “That was, ah—I found that near the river. It is not technically mine.”

But he’d picked it up anyway. Not technically his. _Hah._ “The river?” Molly asked.

“ _Ja._ It is not good for swimming, though.”

“Well, can I see it?”

“It is not a cheerful place. But I will show you if you really want to see it.”

It only took a little more gentle prodding before, later that day—or so it was, according to Caleb—they headed out through the fields. “I do not have a door to the river,” Caleb said. “I am afraid we will have to walk.”

“That’s fine.” Molly kicked his legs as he walked, enjoying the way the grass swished around his knees. “What’s it’s name?”

Caleb hesitated. “I do not know,” he admitted. “Most of these names, I learned from the shades. This one was a little more vague. They do not bother with it, so they do not really have a name. I call it the River of Lost Things. It is... embarrassingly long, now that I say it out loud.”

“How come none of them bother with the river?”

There was another noticeable pause before Caleb spoke without looking at him. “My theory is that they do not like to be reminded of the lives they had before they came here. Whether it is out of regret, or just because they do not wish to remember… I suppose it would vary from creature to creature.”

Molly could relate to that. Not wanting to think about what you’d been, before.

He shook his head. No, he had been nothing before. He was only Mollymauk, only the present and the future. Joy and revelry.

Abruptly, the sound of the swishing grass stopped and Molly’s foot sank into something soft. They’d reached the river before he even realized they were getting close—it looked nothing like he’d expected. The banks were wide tracts of sand so dark it was nearly the color of charcoal. And the water was black as oil and just as sluggish. But that wasn’t what made Molly stop. No, it was not the river itself, but its contents. The things littered around, half buried in the sand paint and seams partially worn away. Floating slowly down river, soaked and blackened.

It was just… things. Children’s dolls. Scrolls of parchment. Weavings. Furniture. Urns and tools and clothes and… everywhere he looked, there was something else lost. Abandoned. Like the river carried the remains of a flooded city.

Caleb was looking out over all of it, silent. Molly tried to keep the horror out of his voice. “What is all of this?”

“They are lost things,” Caleb replied. His voice was weirdly muted. As if the river swallowed part of it. “Some of it are things that are lost in life—symbols of love, friendship, family. Or literal objects that slip through the cracks of reality when they are lost or destroyed. Some of it, mortals clung to until they came here.” He exhaled. “But they always abandon whatever they bring as they wade across the river.”

“What’s on the other side?” Molly asked. He could see no shades, no buildings. Just the empty sea of grass.

Caleb studied the far shore. “Another entrance, I suppose,” he said. “I have never attempted to cross, myself. I do now know whether it would have the same effect on me that it does on them.”

“You think you would lose your things?”

“I think I would lose myself,” Caleb murmured. “The shades may retain their personalities, if they are lucky, but none remember who they were before. If I cross the river, I would likely have very little of my memories left by the time I reached the other side.”

“Oh.” Molly took a step back into the grass. He was not keen on the idea of losing his memories a second time.

The movement caught Caleb’s attention. “It cannot hurt you just by being near,” he assured Molly. “It is not as if the water itself is the cause.” He walked to the edge and stooped to fish something out of the river. Molly held his breath, but when Caleb turned to face him again, he seemed to be the same as he always did. In his hands was a wide, silvery necklace of interwoven threads, like a net. He stood gently wiping the black water off of it for a moment before Molly spoke up again from his safe distance.

“What are you going to do with that?”

Caleb draped the necklace over his arm. “Ah. I will show you when we return to the house. Perhaps you might like to help me with it.” His eyes crinkled at the corners in what could’ve almost been a smile, except his mouth was as dour as ever.

And still after that, he didn’t step away from the water. He just stood, studying it like he was looking for something.

Carefully, Molly approached him and stood at his side. None of the things in the river looked appealing to him. “Do you… normally take things out of the river?” he asked.

He didn’t get a response right away. Caleb seemed lost in thought—he didn’t even react to Molly’s voice. Molly watched him for a second, and was opening his mouth to repeat his question when Caleb sighed.

“You know,” he murmured, “some people used to worship me, in my true aspect. The first civilizations, along the riverbanks. The rivers were the beginning of all life. The floods fed the land, and the people loved me and revered me. Destruction resulted in change, but not necessarily devastation. Even fires burned away the old and made way for new life to take root. But as… things progressed, mortals grew to fear death. They fear my realm.”

Mollymauk didn’t have a response for that. Sometimes he forgot how old Caleb was. How long he’d been down here.

“I don’t even cause them, did you know that?” Caleb exhaled. “They are mine, but I cannot decide where and when they strike. Responsibility without control. And I accept what the floods and fires carry here, all the sorrow and anger along with the debris.”

It sounded like a poor offering to Mollymauk. When mortals sent sacrifices to him, they were beautiful—food, alcohol, flowers; scraps of pretty fabric and babies’ sandals and lovers’ locks of hair. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to only ever get offerings that were broken and burned. Things lost, not given.

“Let’s head back,” Molly suggested, trying to keep his voice light. “Show me what you’re going to do with that.”

Caleb didn’t brighten so much as he got a little less shadowy. “ _Ja._ Let’s go.”

As they entered the house, Caleb snapped his fingers at the fireplace and a fire roared up out of the cold logs. “Frumpkin?” he called.

“You’re giving it to the cat?” Molly asked, a little incredulous but mostly amused.

“Ah. You will see.” Movement caught Caleb’s eye, and he looked down as Frumpkin slid around the doorpost. “There you are, friend. Come, I have something new for you to take.” He held out his arm, elbow bent, like a falconer. Molly was opening his mouth to make a joke— _What, is he going to fly up there?—_ When Frumpkin leaped forward in an explosion of feathers. Molly jerked backwards at the blur of movement, and in the second it took him to recover, the cat was gone. In its place, a small falcon stood on Caleb’s wrist. A very familiar falcon. Mollymauk stared.

“Here.” Caleb offered the necklace to the creature, who it took it with one clawed foot. “See that this finds someone who will appreciate it, will you?”

Frumpkin looked at Mollymauk. Then he looked down at the necklace. Molly didn't know whether to laugh _—_ he could almost see the wheels turning in Frumpkin's little bird brain. But then the bird squawked and took off, gliding through a window and out of sight. Molly watched him go and wondered who he would take it to, now.

“I am not able to contact specific people through Frumpkin,” Caleb explained, apparently oblivious to Molly's reaction to the bird. “But he will bring that to somebody living.”

“Is that… okay?” Molly asked. “Giving someone’s lost necklace to somebody else?”

“It is better than letting it disintegrate in the river,” Caleb said with certainty. “Perhaps it will bring somebody joy.” One corner of his mouth pulled. Still not quite a smile, but closer than anything else Molly had seen on him.

Molly looked out the window after Frumpkin again, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed. “I’m sure it will.”


	14. Yasha

It had been a week. Two weeks. A month, maybe. Two? Three? Yasha wasn’t keeping track. She’d searched all of Molly’s favorite cities. She’d followed rumors of performances and dancing troupes and festivals and parties and weddings and she still hadn’t found him. She’d asked around. Even though the mortals never knew who he was, they always remembered him. She’d always been able to find him. But nobody seemed to have seen him lately.

And what was worse, it was getting harder to… feel him, sort of. He was god of these things, all this life. Food and drinks and love and laughter. She’d always been able to feel a small piece of Mollymauk within the festivities. He was a part of them and they were a part of him. Even if he wasn’t physically present, he was there in spirit.

But she was standing in the middle of a bustling town square, in the middle of the night, when it hit her that she couldn’t feel him at all. The festival around her felt and sounded like a beating heart, but it was slow and dull. Everyone seemed tired. There was laughter, but it was a little strained, maybe a little forced.

And the longer she searched, the more she saw it. Not just in the people, though. There was less and less birdsong. Fewer creatures scampering past in the brush. The color in flowers grew duller and duller until the meadows began to wither all together. Even the sunlight seemed less warm. A chill breeze blew across the hills and snaked through the towns.

And although Yasha looked and looked and looked, Mollymauk was nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last chapter was a little short and this one is even shorter, so I'm posting them one right after the other.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the scenes in this chapter was like the third scene I wrote for this

Frumpkin slunk back into the house later the next day. Caleb was at one of the tables, still looking for whatever he’d been looking for, and Molly sat across from him, shuffling through his cards.

An insistent meow was the familiar’s only announcement that he was back. Molly looked down at the floor. “ _You,_ ” he said, grinning in contrast to the severity in his voice. He took his feet off the table and reached down to scoop the cat up off the floor. “You little sneak, pawning your job off on me.” He poked Frumpkin in the stomach, making the cat grumble.

Caleb’s brow creased. “What are you talking about?”

“ _Your_ cat,” Molly informed him archly, flicking his tail to let Caleb know he was being playful, “had been flying up there and handing off your gifts to _me._ So _I_ could give them to someone else.”

Caleb huffed. “That is just like a cat,” he said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was doing that.” He gave Frumpkin a stern look. Frumpkin rubbed his face against Mollymauk’s shoulder and purred. “You are not going to cute your way out of this one,” Caleb added.

Molly snorted. “I guess it’s fine. I liked having the extra gifts to give away. Which reminds me, I still have the last thing he gave me. Do you want to send it back up?” He fished around in his pocket and brought out the little drawstring bag.

Instantly the smile dropped from Caleb’s face. He looked at the drawstring bag as if it was something familiar and horrible—like a severed hand of someone he knew.

Molly drew back a little, surprised and worried by the reaction. “You okay?”

“I am… fine.” Caleb’s voice was void of any emotion, and his expression had melted into blankness. He held out his hand. “May I…?”

“Of course.”

Caleb opened the bag and shook the string of beads out into his palm. He stared at them in silence for too long. Molly knew what it looked like when someone was remembering—he’d seen this expression on Yasha many times. 

“…Is that yours?” Molly asked, drawing Caleb out of the memory before he could sink too deeply into it.

He coiled the string but didn’t put it away. His expression was still drawn. “Well, I gave it away, so no. It is not.”

Molly made an exasperated sound. “ _Was_ it yours?”

Caleb shook his head. “It was my mother’s,” he murmured. “A courting gift, from my father.”

“Oh,” said Mollymauk. “I don’t know if I’ve seen that style before.”

Caleb shrugged. “It’s an old fashion. They go around your wrist, like this.” He wrapped the beads to demonstrate, but didn’t fasten the cord. That done, he slid them off of his wrist and put them back into the bag. “You may keep them, if you wish.”

“I don’t think I do,” Molly told him. “Not that I’ve got anything against using something nobody else is using, but… well, it seems like they really mean something to you.” He watched Caleb shrewdly, figuring Caleb caught the unspoken addition— _Something you’re not telling me about._ What sort of memories did he have about these, that they caused him to react that way to seeing them?

Whatever it was, Caleb didn’t seem inclined to talk about it. He hummed noncommittally. “Perhaps I will give it to someone else, then.”

“Who, Veth?”

Caleb took a very deep breath that grew very close to a sigh at the end. “I do not know. Perhaps.” He stuffed the bag down into his pocket. “I should get back to work. What are your plans for today?”

It had been nearly a week since Molly did much more than sit in the library. He was going stir-crazy again. “I was thinking I might visit Sinoe,” he said. “That weaver I met in the City of the Blessed. See if she has anything new to show me.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” Caleb was already leaning over his notes again. Molly waited to see if he was going to say anything else, but he didn’t. He still had more questions, but he could respect someone who didn’t want to talk about his past. He’d spent enough time with Yasha to know that, no matter how close you were to someone, there were always going to be things they didn’t tell you. And he wasn’t all that close to Caleb, anyway. Not really.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll see you later, then.”

He used the door in the house to get to the City this time, instead of walking through the fields. Since the chatter about his presence had died down, he wasn’t immediately surrounded by people. Though some of the shades did recognize him and come over to talk, it wasn’t too much. He made it to Sinoe and had a long, lovely talk with her before a crowd started gathering again, and he figured it was time to make his exit.

Regretfully he told her goodbye and promised to visit again soon, and he snagged a berry tart on his way back to the doorway. He didn’t quite remember where it was; it took him nearly half an hour of opening and closing doors to find the one that led back to Caleb’s house. Popping the last bite of the tart into his mouth, he stepped through the doorway and shut the door behind himself.

And then he stopped.

The door to the library was wide open. He’d left that door closed, because Caleb preferred to have it closed. And Caleb always closed the door behind himself when he came in or out of the library. That shouldn’t have set off an alarm bell, but Caleb was so meticulous about how he left things, and Molly was _sure_ he’d shut that door when he left.

Cautiously, he slipped into the library and moved silently toward the railing. He could hear Caleb’s voice, and someone else’s. Something crashed down below. His heart jumped into his throat and he darted to the railing.

Down on the first floor, the table Caleb had been working at had been knocked over on its side and its contents had spilled onto the floor, the papers scattered and the books lying open on their spines. Caleb was on his back on the flagstones, leaning on his elbows, his face turned upwards and his expression resigned. The other person in the room, the one he was looking up at, was a wonderfully familiar figure who had her sword raised over her head. But in an instant, Molly could see the arc of that blade, and what would follow, and fear raced through his veins.

“Yasha!” he shouted.

She froze and looked up at him, wide-eyed.

“Yasha, don’t hurt him!” Molly vaulted over the railing and landed on the flagstones below, painfully jarring his ankles. But the stairs would have taken too long and he could feel his pulse beating in his throat. He darted around the tables and headed towards them, trying not to break into a run. He didn’t want to startle her. He’d never been so happy and so terrified in all his life. “Don’t—he didn’t do anything, all right? It’s not his fault I’m here.” He trotted to a halt a few paces away, half afraid to get any closer.

Slowly, she lowered the sword and stepped off of Caleb. “You disappeared,” she said. Her voice was trembling. “I looked for you everywhere, but you weren’t in any of the cities. And some nymphs told me what direction you’d gone in, and I found the cave, and…”

“I’m sorry.” Mollymauk wrapped his arms around her. She jumped, almost breaking out of his grip, but after a second she relaxed into the hug. Caleb, forgotten, pushed himself to his feet and moved to stand a safe distance away.

Yasha shifted back, and Mollymauk let her step out of his arms. She took his hands in hers and looked down at them. Her expression creased with worry and fear. “Molly, you’re _cold._ ”

“Well, it’s cold here,” he began.

“No, you’re—you’re—” She lifted one hand to cup his cheek. “What happened to you?”

He exhaled and let his hand drop from hers. “I’m stuck here,” he told her. “I… wandered down here and ate something, and now I can’t leave.” He offered an ironic smile, like _Doesn’t that just sound like something I’d do?_

“Why can’t you leave?” Her gaze flicked to Caleb, already darkening again.

“It’s not his fault,” Molly assured her quickly, stepping sideways to put himself between them. “He’s been kind enough to let me stay in his house, so at least I’m not out with the shades.”

“Who is he?” Yasha’s tone was still dangerous.

“Uh…” Mollymauk glanced back at Caleb. “Well, his name is Caleb. He rules the dead. Apparently.”

“I think I don’t know any gods by that name.” Her intense gaze remained fixed over Mollymauk’s shoulder.

“It is… not the name you would know me by,” Caleb agreed slowly.

“Then what is?” she asked.

He didn’t reply right away.

Molly looked back and forth between them, not sure whose side he should choose. On one hand, Caleb had said that his name was bad luck. On the other… if Molly had a fatal flaw, it was curiosity. He knew the stories of most of the major gods. Was it possible that he’d already heard of Caleb by another name? Maybe if he knew that, he would know why Caleb was… well, why he was like this?

Caleb took a deep breath and slowly drew himself upright, lifting his chin. He was taller than Molly had ever realized, though not by much. “Bren,” he said, quiet but steady. “Bren Aldric Ermandrud.”

Connecting that name with Caleb was like getting socked in the gut. Bren Aldric Ermandrud. Of _course_ Molly knew that story. Bren Aldric Ermandrud, who had been a scholar of magic, deceived and manipulated by his mentor into killing his own parents. Bren Aldric Ermandrud, who wandered for years and years and years searching for a way to bring them back, and became immortal not by ascending, but because of the way his heart shriveled in his chest along with his hope. Bren Aldric Ermandrud, who was left preserved in his grief, a husk of all his wasted time and wasted dreams, and who disappeared centuries ago and hadn’t been seen since.

The whole story, when Molly and Jester convinced Marion to tell it to them, had made Jester cry. Molly didn’t know how he would have reacted to it, if he’d been alone; as it was, he’d been too focused on comforting Jester to really think about how he actually felt about the story. _I’m sure he’s gotten better,_ Molly had told her certainly. _It’s been so long._ But Caleb still labored under the burden of that grief.

“Bren Aldric Ermandrud faded away long ago,” Caleb said quietly. “I am what became of him. I am sure that you of all people can understand.” He met Yasha’s eyes, and to Molly’s surprise, her expression tightened.

But she held his gaze. “I guess I can,” she murmured. “But… I need Molly to come back with me.” She took his hand. Molly squeezed. She didn’t squeeze back. “It’s not just for me. It’s gotten cold up on the surface. The sun hasn’t been as strong, and the animals aren’t coming out.” She turned to Molly. “Jester misses you so much I’m worried she’s going to make herself sick. And Beau’s shut herself away.”

“What? Why?”

"Because they miss you. We miss you. Everyone. Everything. It all misses you.”

Molly stared at her. “What do you mean, everything?”

“Everything. All of it. As far as I’ve gone, the plants are withering up and the trees have lost their leaves, and the sky is gray and the water is dark and cold and…” Yasha blinked quickly. “It’s like the whole world can tell you’re gone.”

Molly looked at Caleb, but Caleb looked just as shocked as he felt. “You didn’t know this was happening?”

Caleb shook his head. “There has not been much of an influx of souls. But… if you are telling the truth, then there will be one soon if we cannot return you to the surface.”

“Well—I haven’t actually tried to leave lately,” Molly said. “I should give it another try. Maybe it’s gone away on its own.” He could tell from the look on Caleb’s face that he didn’t think this was likely. “I might as well,” he said.

It was unceremonious, this exit. Yasha wanted to go right away, and it wasn’t like there was anything to pack. Molly gave Frumpkin one last scritch behind the ears. Caleb didn’t seem inclined to try and stop them. He did wander after them to the door of his house, but he didn’t follow them any farther as they headed down the hill. At the mouth of the cave, Molly glanced backwards. Caleb was still watching them from the doorway.

“Molly?” Yasha asked from up ahead.

“Coming!” Molly trotted up after her, flicking his tail. “Here we go?”

“Here we go.”

They started walking. Molly couldn’t see the light from the sun from here. “Is it nighttime?” he asked.

“No, it’s day,” Yasha replied.

That small reassurance meant more than she probably thought it did. It was a 50/50 chance, of course, but if the days were accurate in the City of the Blessed, then that was a small comfort. If Caleb had been telling the truth when he told Molly whether it was morning or evening, that was… hm. The reminder of Caleb sent guilt through his mind like a shard of ice. He glanced back again at the flickering torches at the base of the tunnel. Now that he knew who he was... wasn't leaving him here along the cruelest thing he could do? He hadn't figured out a way for Caleb to come with him yet. But he could come visit, right? He wouldn't just leave him here forever. And he still had to visit Frumpkin and Sinoe.

That was when he noticed the growing ache in his lungs. The exit still wasn’t visible, but he could feel the same effects as he had the last time he was in this tunnel. He wouldn't have thought he was slowing down, except that it was getting harder to keep up with Yasha.

He told himself that he was just tired, that was all. He hadn’t been running around as much so he’d started to lose his stamina.

But the farther he walked, the more his stomach sank. It was harder to notice now that he was moving slower, but his breath was coming short. He found himself falling behind even more. Yasha turned, and her brow creased with concern. “Molly, what’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.” It was hard to talk. Even he could tell he sounded winded.

Yasha came back over to him. “Do you want me to carry you?”

Molly suddenly had an image of Yasha carrying him up out of the underworld, and him turning to dust as soon as they reached the surface. Damn it. “I don’t think…” He had to pause and take a breath. “I don’t think this is working.”

She looked back down the tunnel, and then back to him. “Is this what you meant when you said you can't leave?”

Reluctantly, he nodded. “Caleb told me… if I go to the surface… I’ll disappear.”

“But _why?_ ” She took his hand. He couldn't stand to see the heartbreak in her eyes, so he looked at her hand in his and shook his head.

“Some… underworld thing. I don’t know. We’re… looking into it.”

She thought hard for a moment. “Okay,” she murmured. Then, reluctantly, she started to lead him down the tunnel again. “Let’s go back. I’ll just stay here with you.”

Yasha had always enjoyed the quiet, but Molly couldn’t imagine her staying in the underworld. There were no flowers. None of the life she needed around her. No Beau or Jester or Caduceus. Even if he pointed that out, she probably wouldn't listen. But also... “I don’t think the surface can lose another god right now,” he told her. The closer they got to the underworld again, the easier it was to breathe. Molly wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“The world doesn’t need war,” Yasha murmured.

“It needs grief,” Molly replied, squeezing her hand. “If what you’re saying is true, then there’s going to be a lot of loss starting soon. People need to be able to get through it. Caduceus can help, but they’re going to need you. Whether they know it or not."

Yasha didn’t respond right away. “I’ll come visit you,” she said. “I’ll bring some of the others.”

Molly smiled. “I’d love that. Maybe Beau and Caleb can put their heads together and figure something out.”

She nodded. They stopped at the mouth of the cave. Up at the house, Caleb was still standing in the doorway, as if he’d been waiting for them to return. Probably because that was exactly what he’d been doing. He'd known they wouldn't make it. Molly felt a twinge of anger--why hadn't he tried to stop them?--but it quickly faded. It wasn't as if anything Caleb said could have kept them from leaving.

“I hate that he was right,” Molly muttered.

The look Yasha cast towards Caleb was difficult to read. “I’ll be back,” she assured Molly once again.

"I'll look forward to it."

Then they exchanged one last hug, and Yasha started away up the tunnel again.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been buried deep in TAZ Graduation and Life of the Party dnd, and then an hour and a half ago I looked up and thought “I’m going to write another chapter of Sunlight Underground”

Caleb retreated to the library once he saw Mollymauk return with Yasha. He’d known this would happen. He’d hoped that it wouldn’t; that Mollymauk would leave, and he could return to his solitude. It would be no more than he deserved, to have a glimpse of brightness like this, only to stand and watch it walk away and to do nothing to try and stop it.

“You do not deserve it,” he muttered to himself as he made his way back to his library. Molly probably would not want to see him, so it would be best to tuck himself out of sight while his guest did his grieving. “Of course you do not deserve it. Stupid, stupid, stupid, you let your guard down and now he is stuck here. He had friends, he had a life, and now he is here because you thought you could slack off…” He dropped into his seat and tore a book open, creasing one of the pages. Ashamed, he hurried to flatten it out again with his fingers.

Up above him, the door to the library swung open and he just had time to look up before Molly arrived at the railing. “Hey, what the hell was _that?_ ” he demanded, his voice filling the open space. Caleb’s stomach sank. Ah. So Mollymauk would not grieve through silence, but through anger. It was just as well.

He looked back down at the book, as if that would make it easier to take. “I did tell you that you could not leave,” he said bleakly.

“No! I mean—you did, but we wanted to _try,_ but—that’s—” He huffed in frustration and headed for the stairs. Caleb kept his face turned down, but his eyes fixed on the bottom of the stairs until Mollymauk appeared and headed towards him. “I mean, what were you _doing?_ I saw you on the floor, there, earlier. Why weren’t you fighting back?”

Caleb kept his head down. _That_ was what Molly had decided to be upset about?

“Hey! I’m talking to you, y’know!” Molly grabbed his shoulder and immediately snatched his hand away with a hiss of pain. Caleb knew that his temperature fluctuated with his emotions, though he couldn’t feel it himself. He wasn’t sure whether he’d gone cold enough to burn or as searing hot as an oven.

Molly clutched his hand to himself for a moment, frowning indignantly. “Hey,” he said again. “What the fuck was going on back there? It looked like you were going to let her kill you.”

“I was not,” Caleb said quietly. “I cannot be killed.”

“But you were—you were going to let her hurt you! You weren’t trying to get away, or anything!”

“I am familiar with Yasha’s sphere of influence,” Caleb murmured. “War invariably leads to disaster and death. She is far more powerful than I am. I could not have stopped her if I tried.” He hadn’t tried. He hadn’t wanted to. He knew what Veth would say about that.

“You don’t know that!” Molly said, an echo of the Veth in Caleb’s mind. “You didn’t try at _all!_ ”

“It would have been no more than I deserve,” he said. “You know the story. I saw it on your face when I told you my name. You know what I’ve done.”

Molly was silent for a second. “Yeah, but that was a long time ago. Anyone can see that you’re not that person anymore.”

“Time does not change anything.” Caleb slapped his book shut. “Whatever she did to me would have only been a fraction of due justice. It would have been better for everything if she had speared me into the floor and the two of you had left.”

Molly blinked. “Are you telling me that if she’d killed you, I wouldn’t have been stopped?”

“No—” Caleb ran a hand through his hair. “No. That is not what I was saying.” What he’d meant was that both would have been just punishment. “Whether or not I am here has no bearing on your imprisonment. You are tied to the underworld, not to me.”

“Okay. Because, I was going to say—if that’s the only option, I think I’d rather just stay here.”

“No, you would not.”

Molly didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He left. Caleb forced himself to focus on his book again.

  
The house was a lot quieter after that. Once Mollymauk had cooled off from the argument with Caleb, he had no words left in him, and the cold silence started to soak through him. Caleb had figured that that seeing one of his friends would only make him feel worse—after all, he knew the feeling well. The joy of a visitor was always quickly overshadowed by loneliness after they were gone.

On the third day after Yasha left, Mollymauk stopped going to the library. He spent the morning in the main room, listlessly playing with Frumpkin. He wasn’t sure how long Caleb had been standing in the doorway by the time he finally noticed him and lifted his head.“Mollymauk,” he began, half in the doorway, as if he was prepared to run away. “Is there...” He paused. “You are not meant to be this way. Can I help, in any way?” The question was horribly vague and roundabout, and Molly could tell he knew it. He was opening his mouth again to clarify when Mollymauk spoke up to save him.

“Nothing that you aren’t already doing, I guess.” Only a moment after he finished speaking, he stilled. Frumpkin latched onto his wrist and gnawed benignly at his fingers. “Well, maybe there is something.”

Caleb’s expression didn’t change, so Molly wasn’t sure what his reaction was until he said, “What is it?” His voice was still difficult to read. Molly wasn’t sure if he knew how disconcerting that was. He was fairly sure at this point that Caleb at least wasn’t doing it on purpose. It seemed like that was just his face.

“Would you just sit with me?” Now, in the wake of Yasha’s visit, that was what he missed the most. Rainy afternoons sitting under a porch with Beau. Lying in a field with Jester. Leaning against Yasha’s shoulder under a tree. He missed the comfortable quiet.

“Of course. Let me get my book.” Caleb disappeared before Molly could say, “Okay.” He didn’t really need attention so much as he needed company. Frumpkin was lovely, but he didn’t quite do it.

When Caleb returned, Molly was sitting on the floor in front of the fire, leaning back against the chair. He scooted over and patted the floor next to him. Caleb sat down and crossed his legs.

“Before you get to that,” Molly said as Caleb opened his book. “Yasha said she was going to bring other people to visit.”

“…Oh.” Caleb’s voice was quiet. He didn’t seem all that thrilled.

Molly didn’t feel like asking if that was all right. He needed other people. He didn’t want to know whether Caleb was comfortable with it. And he’d warn them about the food—it wasn’t as if they’d be staying.

“They _can_ come down here, can’t they?”

“It is… possible,” Caleb admitted. “Yasha could do it because she already has a connection to this place. Veth… I do not truly know how she finds her way here. But it’s possible that the others may visit, with guidance.”

“Is it normally not possible for anyone to come down here?”

“Not unless they are dead. I do not know what connections you have to this place, but you must have one. Otherwise you should not have been able to find the entrance.” Caleb was watching him, his blue eyes as sharp and straight as a needle and Molly was a bug impaled on a card.

He thought once again of the day he crawled out of his grave.

“Can’t say I can think of anything,” he replied breezily.

Caleb continued to study him, but he didn’t press. Molly appreciated it, even though it made him feel like a hypocrite. He hadn’t exactly demanded details about Caleb’s past, so probably he shouldn’t feel guilty.

“So, who all did you know could find their way down here?” he asked, hoping to lead away from the subject. “Veth, Yasha… What about Caduceus? Do you know him?”

Caleb started to shake his head, but then he paused. “No. I mean, yes, I do know him, but he does not have much to do with guiding souls. His realm has more to do with what the dead leave behind. Their physical remains, and the people around them. He only helps to ensure the souls do not remain on the surface after their time is up.”

Molly had never really thought about Caduceus’s connection to himself. He’d made the decision a long time ago that he didn’t care how he’d ended up six feet underground. He was not the person who’d been buried. That person was long dead. So it didn’t matter whether he was a soul who had remained, or whether some unlucky bastard had been buried alive.

For the first time, Mollymauk felt a twinge of sympathy for that unlucky bastard.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb was giving him an odd look.

He hummed noncommittally. “I was just thinking.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Impulsively, Molly tilted to rest his shoulder against Caleb’s. “Home,” he lied, knowing it would stop any further questions.

Caleb didn’t lean into him, but he didn’t move away, either. He seemed to be reluctantly accepting the physical contact. At least he wasn’t blazing hot like he’d been when they had their argument. Molly’s hand throbbed at the memory.

“What is the valley like?”

Molly hadn’t been ready for more talking, so it took him a moment to process that Caleb had spoken. “What’s the valley like?”

Caleb nodded, his eyes on the fireplace.

“Oh. Well…” Molly sat back against the chair. Caleb subtly adjusted his position so their shoulders were still together. The touch reminded Molly achingly of Yasha again. “Well, there’s a sun, and a moon.”

“I do miss the moon,” Caleb murmured. “My friend was very fond of it. He talked about the stars. From what I understand, they are different than they were the last time I saw them.”

Molly hadn’t realized the stars could change. “I spent a lot of time under the stars,” he said. “If I could remember things like you can, I’d draw them for you.”

Caleb breathed out, but didn’t speak. Molly took that as a cue to go on.

The more he talked, the more he lulled himself into the rhythm of it. He told Caleb about Yasha, about her book of flowers. About Fjord, and how endearingly earnest he was as a new god, even newer than Mollyamuk. About Jester and her mother the Ruby.

“I know of the Ruby,” Caleb put in. His voice was quiet, close to a mumble. Molly realized he was leaning more than he had been a while ago, perhaps drawn in by the stories, himself. “She was around when when I was alive. I did not know she had ascended. Though I cannot say I am surprised.”

“Oh? Did you ever hear her sing?”

He huffed. “No. We did not have the time or money for things like that.”

Molly hummed. He talked about Beau next, about how she would do pushups with him sitting on her back, and then she and Molly would egg Fjord on until he did pushups with Molly on his back, too. Or Jester. Jester liked sitting on Fjord while Molly and Beau snickered to each other. Fjord, for his part, didn’t seem all that opposed to it.

Caduceus, he didn’t have so many stories about. Caleb seemed to know more about him than Molly did. “We have both spent a lot of time with our own company,” Caleb murmured, which Molly took to mean that they’d both spent a lot of time alone.

Again, he felt guilt like a needle in his heart. He’d been close to leaving Caleb alone again. Caleb wasn’t trying to guilt him, he knew he wasn’t, but he was guilty all the same. Nobody deserved that. Remembering those first few hours of life, shivering and cold and so certain he was the only living creature in the world, Molly repeated to himself that he was not going to leave without Caleb. He _meant_ it this time.

Suddenly he was desperate for a voice other than his own. “Hey, Caleb,” he said.

Caleb made a low sound. He seemed half asleep.

“A while ago, we were talking about gods. You said you’d heard stories.”

“Mm.”

“Had you heard of me?”

Slowly, unexpectedly, a smile crossed Caleb’s face. Molly could barely see it from this angle, but it was definitely there. “Yes,” he said. His voice was soft, the way Molly’s hands were soft when he held something fragile and very dear to him. “I'd heard all about you, Mollymauk. The god of revelry. The stories I heard about you were…” He paused, as if searching for words. “Remarkable.”

“Oh dear, which ones? The one where Jester accidentally spelled me to fall in love with that man with the donkey head? Or the one where some mortal tricked me into a box?" Caleb's smile... didn't deepen, quite, but he seemed to be getting more comfortable, or less aware of it. Molly wanted to keep it that way. "Or that one about when I got drunk and tried to create a tree that could grow three kinds of citrus but I just ended up making something that just grew oranges and oranges and oranges and wouldn’t stop until Fjord helped me and Nott destroy it? Sorry—Veth.”

Caleb huffed. “I had not heard… that last one.”

“Do you want to?”

“If you would like to tell it.”

Molly told it. The longer he talked, the more he became aware of Caleb growing heavier against him. It wasn’t until Caleb’s head dipped that Molly trailed to a stop and looked at him. “Caleb?” he whispered.

There was no response.

Molly looked at Frumpkin. “Is he _asleep?_ ”

Frumpkin blinked at him.

Molly looked down. “Well, shit,” he said, keeping his voice down. “ _Now_ what do I do?”

Frumpkin blinked again. Then the traitor padded over, climbed into Molly’s lap, and curled up.

“Lot of help you are,” Molly said to him.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the one time I remember to tell people I'm posting a chapter, I almost forget to post it
> 
> There's a couple of content warnings in the end notes just in case

Bren stood at the bottom of a hill. Immediately his heart leaped—he knew this hill. The half-yellowed grass, the smell of straw and animals and warm dirt—it was all as familiar as his own nose. This was the last hill on the road between his village and the bigger one a half-day’s walk towards the morning sun. He ran to the top of the hill and stopped there as his heart swelled with joy. There was his house, small, stone and mortar with its thatched roof and an apple tree growing outside. Just where it always was. Why wouldn’t it be there? Why had he not expected to see it?

The moment of uncertainty slipped from his mind as he sprinted down the hill, his sandals skidding in the grass. “Mother!” he shouted in a language long dead, his voice close to laughter. His voice was small, young, bright.

“Bren!” His mother poked her head out of a window, her face bright with joy as Bren stopped in front of her his chest heaving. “You’re back! Where’s your father?”

“Catching up,” Bren told her. “I ran ahead! We got _sugar!_ ”

“Sugar! What did you trade for _that?_ ”

“I dunno. Papa said it was a treat.”

She sighed, still smiling. “I’m sure you convinced him it was worth it. Go draw some water, I’ll get the washbowl. Your feet are filthy!”

He took a waterskin and ran to the creek, crouching among the reeds to fill it with water so cold his fingers ached. As he stood and turned, though, he saw smoke rising from the direction of home. “Mother?” he said with his small voice, dropping the waterskin.

Movement happened the way it did in dreams, and suddenly he was in front of his house again. The cart, his father’s cart, was blocking the door and their donkey was nowhere to be seen. “Father!” he shouted, turning to look for him on the road, but the horizon was empty and he could hear his father’s voice from inside. “Father! Mother!” He tried to push the cart away. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He’d put the cart there, him and Astrid and Eodwulf, while Master Ikithon watched them and whispered encouragement.

Hands grabbed at his arms and pulled him away, towards the road. “It’s already done!” Astrid told him. “Bren, just calm down! It’ll be all right! It was for the best!”

Caleb screamed at her, wordless, thoughtless, and tore out of her grip and sprinted back towards the blazing house. His foot hit something soft and heavy and he fell over it onto his hands and knees. Frumpkin yowled and ran to paw at the thing he’d tripped on. Caleb caught color out of the corner of his eye. Purple and gold and red; bright, beautiful colors. He turned his head with his heart in his throat.

Mollymauk lay on the ground. His eyes were open, unseeing. Dead eyes. His cards were scattered around, all scuffed and covered with dirt and ash.

A shadow loomed. He looked up. Yasha stood over them, her eyes bright and glittering like shattered glass. “What did you to him?” she whispered as tears began to roll down her cheeks.

“I d—I didn’t—” The heat from the burning house pressed against his back, but Mollymauk was ice, and there were no injuries, nothing wrong, but he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t _breathing._ “I don’t—”

“What did you _do to him!_ ” The war goddess swung her sword downward.

Caleb doubled over with a shout. His mind scrabbled to makes sense of his surroundings, trying to sort between the real and the imagined. The field was gone and Yasha was gone but the stinging pain in his leg was true enough—he looked down just as Frumpkin retracted his claws and yowled urgently at him.

“What are you so upset about?” Caleb asked, rubbing his aching neck. He pushed himself up off the flagstones with a grimace. He didn’t remember falling asleep on the floor. The fire was out, so he must have been here for a while. But it didn’t seem like Mollymauk to just leave him here. It seemed as if he would have woken him once he got bored of being alone.

Frumpkin made another impatient noise and trotted to the door.

The open door.

Caleb got to his feet, frowning. “Mollymauk?” he called experimentally. There was no response. He tried calling his name into the back hallway, but there was no reply. None of the other doors were open. Just the front door of the cottage.

Frumpkin appeared to claw at the hem of his coat before dashing back towards the front door. This time, Caleb followed him out. He looked up into the tree first, but there was nobody there. Nobody on the ground, either. At least Mollymauk hadn’t fallen out of the branches and hurt himself…

His cat headed for the tall grass. “Wait,” Caleb protested, trotting after him. “Where are you going?”

Frumpkin kept moving. Something was sinking in Caleb’s stomach. He looked around, located a group of shades, and headed towards them. Frumpkin made a sound of irritation and came with him. “Excuse me!” he called as he approached. They faced him and shied back a couple of paces, but at least they didn’t run away. “Excuse me,” he said again. “Has Mollymauk come through here?”

They rolled the name around. Mollymauk? Mollymauk?

“The bright one,” Caleb clarified. “With the colorful coat. He does tricks for other people, and he jingles when he moves.” They were not good with names, but concrete images, they could work with. This was the most concise way he could describe Mollymauk. Brightness and color and laughter.

A coat, they remembered. Jingling, yes. No tricks, though, no tricks. Walking.

“Which way?”

They pointed.

Caleb frowned. There was nothing of note in that direction. The City of the Blessed was off to the left, and the house, behind him. And besides, there was a much shorter path to get to the City. He could have just gone through one of the shortcut doors…

“What was he doing?” Caleb asked the shades. “How was he going?”

_How was he going? How was he going?_

“Did he sing to himself?” Caleb had noticed that Mollymauk often hummed or sang under his breath when he thought nobody was paying attention. He seemed to do it as a way of entertaining himself or keeping himself company.

 _No,_ they told him. He’d been walking. Drifting, almost.

Drifting? That did not seem right.

Caleb bent to pick up Frumpkin. “Thank you,” he said. The shades shifted, ever uneasy in his presence. He had never gotten them to tell him why he made them so uncomfortable. Perhaps they could sense what he was—not like them, not like Mollymauk. Some kind of hideous in-between.

He turned and made his way in the direction they’d indicated. The shades moved out of his path now, and he let them. Frumpkin seemed content to be carried, now that Caleb was actually moving. And all the while, he racked his brain to try and think of why Molly would be coming out this way. There was nothing in this direction, except the river.

As soon as that thought occurred to him, Caleb slowed. And then he sped up again, half running. The river. The only thing here was the river that the shades passed through when they entered. It was possible that Mollymauk had just gone treasure-hunting, but that didn’t seem right. He’d left without warning. Without saying where he was going. Alone. Surely he would have taken Caleb, or at least Frumpkin. Surely he would have said where he was going. Surely he wouldn’t have drifted, surely he would have left a path of warmth through the shades the Caleb could have followed as easily as tracking a firefly at night…

And then he spotted a red coat in the distance. He pushed Frumpkin up onto his shoulder, so he could break into a full run without losing his balance. “Mollymauk?” he called.

The distant figure did not turn. He kept walking. Caleb was gaining ground, quickly, and they were still a ways from the river. But still, he did not slow down. “Mollymauk!” he shouted, louder. His chest ached, but his sense of urgency drove him forward.

Mollymauk did not turn to face him—not when Caleb called his name again, not when he should have heard the swishing grass. Caleb reached him and stepped around in front of him to see his face.

His eyes were open, focused ahead of him, but his face was… blank. No hint of any sort of emotion—no anger, no joy, no anything.

“Mollymauk?” Caleb touched his arm, half afraid.

Molly stopped walking. He blinked. And then he looked at Caleb, and like the sun breaking through the clouds, a smile crossed his face. “You’re awake!” Then he looked around. “Whoa. How did we get out here?”

“You were… you were walking,” Caleb said. He felt weak with relief, but still numb with fear. “You did not seem to hear me calling for you.”

“Walking? I don’t _remember_ walking…” Molly turned in a circle. “Where’s the house?”

“That way.” Caleb pointed. Molly started heading that way, his tail swishing through the grass. Caleb trotted to catch up with him, concerned by Molly’s… lack of concern. “You truly do not remember getting up and leaving?”

“I don’t, no,” For a second, Molly looked troubled. “The last thing I remember, I was sitting there waiting for you to wake up. Frumpkin climbed into my lap while I was trapped, the little sneak.” He reached over to scratch Frumpkin under the chin.

“Yes, I… I must have fallen asleep. I did not know you were gone until Frumpkin woke me up, and it took me a little while to find out where you had gone.”

Molly hummed, still frowning. “Have I done this before?”

“Have—? I was going to ask _you_ that.”

“Nope. I’m pretty sure someone would have told me.” He glanced over his shoulder. “Any idea what I was heading for?”

Caleb warred with himself for a moment. “The only thing in that direction is the River of Lost Things.”

It might have been his imagination, but he could have sworn there was a hitch in Mollymauk’s step right then. “Oh,” he said. “Maybe I was sleepwalking.”

“I do not think you were asleep, Mollymauk.”

“Well, I certainly wasn’t awake.”

Caleb cast a look back in the direction of the river and could have sworn he caught sight of the water in the distance. They had been closer than he was comfortable with. “Well,” he said. “I hope you do not wander off like this again. That was…” He realized Molly was watching him out of the corner of his eye. “That was worrying,” he finished.

“Aw, you were worried about me?” Molly bumped him with his shoulder. The corners of his eyes were crinkled. Caleb found he liked that, but right now, Mollymauk’s crinkled eyes was a distant thing in his mind.

Caleb looked down. His ears were burning. “You are…” _my friend,_ he wanted to say, but was that too much? He thought that Mollymauk liked him well enough, but he had been wrong before. He was good at reading people only when he could take the time to study them objectively. There was no objective way to consider Mollymauk. Caleb wanted Molly to like him. In the face of that, how could he possibly trust anything he read from his expression, his words, his tone of voice? He felt the need to over-analyze every little thing he did, and even then, it was still not enough to assure him.

“I am…?” Molly prompted. His tail swished. He looked sly, but Caleb couldn’t decide whether it was in a good way or a bad way.

“You are important,” Caleb told him, not meeting his eyes. “If you were to lose yourself in the river… it may be a catastrophe for the world above.”

There was a pause, and then Molly snorted through his nose. “I see,” he said. Then he trotted off ahead of Caleb. There was something agitated to the movement of his tail now—it was sharper than it had been a moment ago. Caleb did not trust himself to try and decide what that meant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: major character death (not real, but it's there), standard Caleb backstory
> 
> (I'm not used to doing cw's so I hope this is enough)

**Author's Note:**

> [Follow me on tumblr](https://severalsmallhedgehogs.tumblr.com/) for updates and links to new works/chapters!


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